Menzies Art Brands March 09 Art Auction Review On the 25th of March I attended the Menzies Art Brands auction at their Sydney office. As the first auction I was attending for 2009 I was rather excited to see exactly what the outcome would be
dollar plus works is another indicator that suggests that the owners of works in this price range are holding out for better times and are in a financial position that allows them to do so.
In a wider market context, Menzies Art Brands managed to sell quite a lot of art for quite a lot of money. They did, however, also fail to sell several of the major works and those works that did sell mostly sold for below their low estimate leaving a result that was considerably below what Menzies Art Brands appears to have expected. There were encouraging signs that the Australian art market is weathering the global art market correction better than many would have thought. However, the challenging times are by no means at and end with 2009 panning out to be a sobering year of mixed results and hard fought battles.
**All quoted sale prices are the hammer prices unless otherwise stated
**Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of http://www.artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectibles for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications.
