Sotheby’s Evening Sale this May in NYC will potentially set a new auction record for Lee Krasner, as the artist’s work The Eye is the First Circle (1960) will hit the block with an estimate of $10 million to $15 million, double her current estimate. “This painting represents a critical turning point for Krasner—a rebirth in a sense—as it was executed following a period of great personal loss and tragedy,” says Saara Pritchard, senior vice president and senior specialist of Sotheby’s contemporary art department.
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The Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India is facing controversy over the sale of equipment and materials from the exhibition’s latest edition, which closed this March.  The injunction follows a claim the organization could not sell a series of air-conditioning units until it had paid for them in full. “Kochi Biennale Foundation has received an interim injunction from the district court pausing the auction of the ACs,” a spokesperson for the Biennale said in a statement. “The auction of all other materials will proceed as planned. The legal response to the injunction is being drafted.”
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Phillips has hired American art specialist Elizabeth Goldberg from Sotheby’s, appointing her senior international specialist in American art and deputy chairman for the Americas.“As with other auction house categories, the market for American art has changed rather dramatically over the past 15 years, becoming highly selective at the high end with quality being key, ” Goldberg says. “Given this trend, there are certain artists who have emerged as having the power to hang alongside other titans of the twentieth century.” 
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