When it was shown at a small gallery in New York, three museums bid on it.
For a museum to bid through an auction house executive is rare.
His museum also bid on de Troy's "Retour de Bal," which was up for sale at Phillips on July 4. The painting ended up selling to Konrad O. Bernheimer, a London dealer, for $3.6 million.
The brick pyramid is the museum's bid to assert its presence – we had "literally to fight to get some space for the needs of Tate" – and its material is intended both to cohere with the old power station and assert its difference.
Patricia Frost, Christie's director of costumes and textiles, said she believed that museums would bid for most of the iconic pieces, like Yves Saint Laurent's graphic "Mondrian" dress (which the auction house has estimated at £25,000 to £30,000, or about $39,000 to $46,000).
Terry Herbert, 55, the lucky hobbyist, won't get to keep any of it — museums will bid for that honor — but under British law he stands to get half its value, which could easily make him a millionaire.
Adam Weitsman started researching them at local museums and bidding at high-profile sales.
Mr. Gottlieb capitalized on the cultural cachet of renowned museums by bidding for the distribution rights to their exhibit catalogs, at one point making Abrams a co-publisher with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim and the Whitney, among many others.
And more than 1,700 entrants sought the chance to create Helsinki's Guggenheim museum before the bid by Paris-based architects Moreau Kusunoki was eventually selected.
A Santa's grotto in Birmingham has been axed by a council-funded museum in a bid to save money.
