THIS WEEK'S HOT TOPIC
Brancusi, Pollock, and Rothko dominated the New York auctions last month, but come July, a new figure will rule the sales rooms. His name is Gus.
Last week, Sotheby’s announced that a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton will headline its Natural History auction on July 14. The 38-foot-long fossil, nicknamed “Gus” after the late South Dakota rancher who owned the land on which it was discovered, is among the largest and most complete T. rex specimens ever discovered. It will carry a pre-sale estimate of $20–30m—the highest such figure ever placed on a dinosaur at auction.
That claim may sound specious, but dinosaur skeletons have become big business in recent years, particularly at auction houses, where museums contend with ultra-wealthy collectors on the hunt for new trophies. Two things are sure: 1. This market isn’t headed for extinction anytime soon. 2. There is no limit to the number of dinosaur puns editors will come up with in their coverage of it.
The T. rex skeleton known as “Gus.” 📸 Matthew Sherman. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
The trend has been evolving since 1997, when Sotheby’s sold Sue, another T. rex, for $8.3m. That example went to a natural history institution, Chicago’s Field Museum; so did the next record-setting T. rex, Stan, which sold to the Abu Dhabi government—on behalf of the UAE capital’s own natural history museum—for $31.8m at Christie's in 2020.
However, the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever purchased was a different animal—literally and figuratively. A Stegosaurus called Apex sold for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s in 2024 to hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, instigating the latest iteration of a long-simmering debate over whether such historic artifacts belong in private hands. (Griffin has since lent Apex to New York’s Museum of Natural History.) You can bet that discourse picks up again after the sale in July, where Gus stands a good chance to break Apex’s record. In the words of a certain scientist: “Hold on to your butts.”
Regardless of where Gus ends up, we’ll at least have a rare chance to see the skeleton in person. Sotheby’s plans to install the fossil at its New York headquarters starting July 1. The exhibition will be free and open to the public.
3…THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT ATTENDING OPENINGS
1
Dress comfortably but stylishly to openings. A gallery opening isn’t a black tie affair; nobody will be wearing their tails and ballgowns. But it’s also not a sleepover. An opening is a big day for an artist and their gallery, so dress as though it is a nice event you're excited to attend. There is a happy medium between overdressing and underdressing in the art world. The easy solution for men is an unstructured blazer over whatever you're already wearing—maybe a t-shirt or a button-down. The goal is to feel equally comfortable discussing a painting with an artist, catching up with friends, or attending a collector's dinner afterward.
2
Some openings have beer, wine, or sparkling water waiting at the front desk; others offer nothing at all. Neither approach is better—it simply reflects the gallery's culture. A younger space in Chinatown or the Lower East Side may greet visitors with a cooler full of lagers, while a blue-chip gallery in Chelsea may break out the brut. In some cases, this is a matter of style; in others, it comes down to insurance requirements surrounding valuable works on loan. Either way, the point of an opening isn't the refreshments—the drinks are a courtesy, not the attraction. The real purpose is to engage with the art and the people gathered around it.
3
Openings are often some of the easiest places in the art world to start a conversation. Dealers, artists, curators, collectors, and advisors are all in the same room, and unlike at a formal meeting, everyone is there to socialize. That said, timing matters. If a dealer is deep in conversation with a client, it's best to wait for your turn. A simple introduction, a thoughtful question, or even a quick "Congratulations on the show" goes a long way. You don't need to impress anyone with insider knowledge. Showing genuine interest in the exhibition is often enough to start a meaningful relationship, and openings remain one of the best places to make connections in the art world.
A NUMBER TO KNOW
$7.7m
The total (with fees) generated by the Handbags & Accessories sale at Christie’s Hong Kong on May 25. The result speaks volumes about the state of the luxury and art businesses at the peak of the auction sector.
On the one hand, $7.7m (HK$59.9m) is the largest amount hauled in by any auction in the handbags and accessories category worldwide this spring, according to Christie’s. More than 70% of the lots in the sale outperformed their high estimates (after fees), and four bags set global auction records. The star of the event was an Hermès alligator Faubourg Birkin—a rare model designed to echo the architecture of the brand’s Parisian headquarters at 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré—which went for more than $551,000 (HK$4.3m).
On the other hand, the $7.7m made by the entire sale is on par with what Christie’s (or Sotheby’s) would generate for one good-but-not-masterpiece-level lot in a premier evening sale of fine art. For comparison, Christie’s brought in $7.8m for a cast of Henry Moore’s Double Standing Figure, a modernist bronze conceived in 1950 and offered as the final lot in the house’s 20th Century Evening Sale in New York just one week earlier. The auction that sculpture concluded made $490.3m overall, or nearly 64x the total for Christie’s record-setting Hong Kong handbags sale.
The point here isn’t to cast Birkins and other high-priced accessories as a waste of the auction houses’ time and effort. It’s just to note that luxury goods are still much more of a volume game than fine art. What they lack in a dollar-for-dollar competition across categories, they make up for with mass appeal and (relative) accessibility. So the houses’ goal is to make luxury a gateway to art—and every new record set in the former reinforces the potential of that transition.
—Tim Schneider / The Gray Market
ASK: ACCESS SOPHISTICATED KNOWLEDGE
We ASKed: What separates elite auctioneers from their peers?
Josh Baer for NoReserve: They all share the same information before a sale—a chart with the locations of known or presumed bidders on each lot. That means they know where to look and make eye contact. The best at this was Christopher Burge, who, entertainingly, always seemed to get the most bids. It can be as simple as personally knowing the sales floor players, though a great outsider can also succeed.
The data allows them to decide the price at which the auction house is willing to take a bid or instead designate the lot as P or L (profit or loss) to keep the energy alive during the sale. In other words, they choose, on the fly, between making little to no profit to satisfy a seller or accepting, say, 28% of the buyer's premium. Being a good number cruncher under pressure helps.
Elite auctioneers can make it look like there are real bids when it's just the chandelier, a skill that can fool bidders who are on the phone or online. What could help the market in the long run, though, is ditching this fakery and starting the bidding at the reserve, so we would all know equally if a work was selling.
The notion of “elite” is changing as we see a wider array of people stepping up to the rostrum. That’s a good thing, but it means that it takes more time for ambitious auctioneers to get there.
Have your own question for the NoReserve team? Reply to this email or reach out to us on Instagram, @no.reserve. Readers whose submissions we choose get a special prize—six free months of our paid newsletter, The Baer Faxt.
2 MINUTES WITH…
The Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai isn’t really a museum at all—it’s a non-collecting institution, more like a kunsthalle—but that’s not the only thing that sets it apart. RAM’s leadership, starting with Executive Director and Chief Curator X Zhu-Nowell, is thinking long and hard about the role it plays in cultural exchange. Below, hear Zhu-Nowell discuss the evolving policies of RAM—including the elimination of admission fees last year—and how they reflect the values of what she calls a “resistant institution.”
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Sports fans, this one’s for you. The Baer Faxt Podcast is back with two icons, artist Jonas Wood and tennis legend John McEnroe, who spoke with us on the occasion of the former’s recent exhibition of paintings at Gagosian Beverly Hills. The pair has more in common than you'd think. Tune in to hear about Wood and McEnroe’s shared experience of putting themselves on the line in front of an audience, their appreciation of tennis courts, and more. The Art of the Court with Jonas Wood & John McEnroe is out now on all major podcast streaming platforms and at thebaerfaxtpodcast.com. This episode is brought to you by Ursula - A Magazine of Contemporary Culture by Hauser & Wirth.
Jonas Wood with “Nintendo #4,” 2026, and “Hamburg Open with Girl,” 2026. 📸: Marten Elder. Courtesy of Jonas Wood and Gagosian.
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