The (Red) Auction Topples High Estimate & Other Art World News

Christie's and Sotheby's both had an excellent Valentine's Day: Yesterday afternoon, a sale of Impressionist and modern art at the former topped the high end of its pre-sale estimate by more than a million dollars, demonstrating "that the market remains strong and buoyant," according to Guy Bennett, head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie's Americas. And last night, The (Red) Auction fetched a whopping $42.58 million at Sotheby's against a pre-sale estimate of $21 million - $29 million. (It even topped the original $40 million estimate that the auction house subsequently cut on fears that trouble in the financial markets would spill over into the art market.) Read more about the star-studded production here.

Nicolai Ouroussoff calls Renzo Piano's design for BCAM at LACMA "architecture without conviction." Roberta Smith refers to the art inside as a "display of pricey trophies, greatest hits of the present and recent past."

Carol Vogel reports that Glenn Lowry's contract at MoMA has been extended and that Damien Hirst is opening a shop that will sell everything from cheap T-shirts to the artist's own work.

The subprime mortgage mess levels plans for London's first permanent Zaha Hadid-designed building.

An $8 million Basquiat painting has been found in a Manhattan warehouse. It went missing after a Brazilian court ordered a bankrupt collector's art to be seized in 2005.

Roanoke, Virginia hopes for the Bilbao Effect.

The Art Institute of Chicago has "resolved its claims for restitution" for the fake Gauguin sculpture — The Faun — it unwittingly purchased for $290,000 in 1997.

An artist works in Ikea.

The Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne discovers it owns a fake Monet.

Private collections take a second look at their security after the theft of six paintings in five days.

Blogger Tyler Green compiles a list of art history mysteries.

Banksy (Defaced Hirst), Keep It Spotless, Estimate: $250,000 - $350,000, Fetched: $1.87 million, Record for the artist at auction