Buddha statue sold for $5 million
A Buddha statue from the Coninx Museum in Zurich sold for $5 million at Christie's auction house in New York, reports swissinfo.ch. (There was no information on who bought the statue.) The statue is considered the most important Buddhist sculpture worldwide to be auctioned. Critics say the sale is in breach the foundation's principles. Do museums have an obligation to keep important works of art accessible to the public? Do most museums have some sort of code of ethics?
Comments
Is there an image of this piece??
Posted by: Seward Ryan | March 26, 2008 02:56 PM
This just in from the New York Times: "A Buddhist temple in suburban Tokyo revealed itself on Tuesday as the buyer that paid $14.3 million for an 800-year-old cypress wood sculpture of Buddha at a Christie’s auction in New York last week, Agence France-Presse reported. The Shinnyo-en temple said it bought the sculpture of the Dainichi Nyorai, or supreme Buddha, with donations from the faithful because it did not want the icon to fall into foreign hands. The sale set a record for a piece of Japanese art and exceeded the sculpture’s presale estimates of $1.5 million to $2.5 million." I'm assuming this is the same statue although the price from swissinfo.ch was different.
Posted by: Jeanne | March 28, 2008 08:04 PM