Toomey & Co. Auctioneers will present Tradition & Innovation, its inaugural auction of important works from the 19th century through today on December 2 at 10 a.m. CST. This sale offers items across a variety of artistic movements and media by painters, furniture makers, designers, ceramicists, silversmiths, sculptors and architects who have helped define the world of art and design for more than a century. Fine art includes four works by Chicago artist Gertrude Abercrombie, who was most recently featured in a retrospective exhibit at New York’s Karma Gallery, and Gladys Nilsson, a member of Chicago Imagist group, “Hairy Who”, currently featured in an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. Other artists include Chicagoans Ed Paschke, Ed Flood and Richard Howard Hunt, as well as a Sol LeWitt sculpture estimated at $100,000-200,000, a 1955 painting by Charles Green Shaw, Edgar Payne’s Twin Peaks, estimated at $

A nearly 1,000-year-old ink painting by one of China’s greatest literati masters Su Shi fetched US$59.5 million (HK$463,600,000) at auction, Christie’s said Monday. The auction house has described the Song Dynasty artwork created by Su as “one of the world’s rarest Chinese paintings”. Entitled “Wood and Rock”, the ink-on-paper handscroll depicts a dragon-like old tree with withered branches and a sharp rock resting at its root. The painting was the most expensive item ever sold in Christie’s Asia, it said. Su Shi, also known as Su Dongpo, is one of the most important cultural figures in Chinese history and was an esteemed scholar, poet, prose-writer, painter, calligrapher and statesman. The 185.5cm-long scroll is inscribed with calligraphy and the poems of four important literati of the 11th century in China, and also exhibits the seals of 41 collectors. “The number of the works securely attributed to him are very few, probably only two or three. They are extremely

Egypt on Saturday unveiled an ancient tomb, sarcophagi and funerary artifacts discovered in the Theban necropolis of Al-Assasif in the southern city of Luxor. In a ceremony in front of the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani announced that French and Egyptian archaeologists had discovered “a new tomb… with very nice paintings”. Located between the royal tombs at the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of the Kings, the Al-Assasif necropolis is the burial site of nobles and senior officials close to the pharaohs. Among the finds in the tomb are sarcophagi, statues and some 1,000 funerary figurines called “Ushabtis” made of wood, faience and clay. The tomb dates back to the Middle Kingdom, which spanned the 11th and 12th dynasties, and belonged to “Thaw-Irkhet-If”, mummification supervisor at the Temple of Mut in Karnak, according to the ministry. Separately, archeologists from the French Institute