Home Is Where the Studio Is |
By Julie Coe, Editorial Director |
Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons at home in Cornwall, Connecticut.
Photo by Stephen Kent Johnson for Sotheby’s Magazine |
When Laurie Simmons was first dating fellow artist Carroll Dunham, she was embarrassed by his chosen medium: Painting. “I mean, painting was dead,” she recalls. “And I was like, I’m going out with one.” Despite the rocky start, they ended up building a life together, with two children, Lena and Cyrus, and two important careers. These days the couple lives and works side by side at their home in the Connecticut countryside. Our December/January issue cover story visits them there, with photos by Stephen Kent Johnson capturing their striking, art-filled spaces.
Actor Bing Crosby and his second wife, Kathryn Crosby, also shared a profession, as well as a love of collecting. In Bing’s case it was horses and horse portraiture; in Kathryn’s it was Fabergé, which she studied and purchased with the savvy of a professional. “She wasn’t buying just to deal though—she wanted to acquire and keep things,” says their son Harry Crosby, in our Collector’s Item column. “That was my parents’ way. They didn’t just collect—they lived with what they loved.” Their wide-ranging personal effects, on view as of tomorrow at Sotheby’s New York, go up for auction on December 18.
Tomorrow Sotheby’s New York also opens “Icons: Back to Madison,” part of the programming celebrating the opening of the Breuer. (Timed tickets are available here, though Sotheby’s Preferred members can enter at any time.) This remarkable show, up through December 21, brings together 25 pieces, all of which have at some point passed through Sotheby’s salerooms—from Lake Sentani sculpture to a legendary Banksy, an important Tiffany necklace to a Warhol Marilyn Monroe. Courtney Kremers, Sotheby’s Vice Chairman, Head of Private Sales, Americas, delves into the details of the Warhol and the show in a December/January Specialist column. A book expanding on the exhibition, titled “Icons: 100 Extraordinary Objects from Sotheby’s History” comes out early next year.
Speaking of celebrations, this week we fêted the five luminaries profiled in our October/November issue with the inaugural Creators & Collectors dinner at the Breuer. Jon Batiste played the melodica, Julian Schnabel reminisced on once having a solo show in the 4th-floor space and everyone feasted on Paris Starn’s conceptual dessert, inspired by the room’s coffered concrete ceiling. For a taste of the festivities, see Collector Walls columnist Lucas Oliver Mill’s red-carpet interviews. |
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Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham’s Connecticut Refuge |
Gaetano Pesce’s “Nobody’s Perfect” chair stands near Albert Oehlen’s “Untitled” painting from 2015; © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London. Photo by Stephen Kent Johnson for Sotheby’s Magazine |
Packing the contents of your studio into a van and crawling across New York City to a new one is no picnic—just ask the painter Carroll Dunham, who did it 11 times in 30 years. Always chasing more square footage, cheaper rent, better light, a shorter commute, a less tragic deli or maybe just a slightly longer lease, he stored his paint in plastic squeeze bottles and hoarded nothing. “I enjoyed setting up studios and felt that my work would happen wherever I was,” Dunham says. For his wife, the photographer and filmmaker Laurie Simmons, whose practice often involves camera rigs, elaborate sets, props and costumes, moving was to be avoided at all costs. |
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Bing and Kathryn Crosby’s Christmas Miracle |
By Harry Crosby, as told to James Haldane |
A bound volume of musical arrangements from “White Christmas,” 1954, created by Paramount Pictures and inscribed to Bing Crosby by the film studio’s music director, Joseph J. Lilley. Photo by Henry Leutwyler for Sotheby’s Magazine |
My father didn’t come from a fancy background, and neither did my mother. But he had already built a career in music and film by the time they met in 1953. He had the trappings of a home and the experience of raising four boys after being widowed from his first wife, Dixie Lee. My mother was raised in West Columbia, Texas, and from a young age loved acting. She got into the University of Texas at 17, and after a year in the drama department moved to California to become a contract player. The studios worked like a trade school—you were paid a few dollars a week while learning every aspect of filmmaking: screen tests, choreography, assisting directors, watching producers at work. That’s where they met, but it wasn’t automatic. He was 30 years older, she was 20, and it took four years to court, building a deep, trusting partnership. |
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THE PRIVATE SALES SPECIALIST |
“Icons: Back to Madison” Unites Works From Auction History |
By Courtney Kremers, Vice Chairman, Head of Private Sales, Americas |
Andy Warhol, “Shot Orange Marilyn,” 1964. Made possible by Kenneth C. Griffin. On view in “Sotheby’s Icons: Back to Madison” at Sotheby’s New York, December 12–21. Photo: © 2025 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York |
Icons live where history and culture meet. Last month, when we opened the doors of the Breuer, our new New York headquarters, an architectural landmark by a Bauhaus titan—meticulously restored by Herzog & de Meuron—it felt both new and familiar. Returning to Madison Avenue, where Sotheby’s first established its U.S. presence in 1964, feels like coming full circle. To mark the occasion, we’re presenting “Icons: Back to Madison,” a loan exhibition of more than two dozen exceptional artworks and objects borrowed from around the world, spanning centuries, media and some of the most defining moments in art history. Each embodies a milestone in our history—having sparked bidding battles or, in some cases, anchored landmark collections as it passed through our salerooms—and holds an enduring place in the broader cultural imagination. |
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Our calendar of must-see museum and gallery shows |
“Untitled,” 1995, by Zao Wou-Ki, part of “Zao Wou-Ki: Master Printmaker” at M+ in Hong Kong. Gift of Françoise Marquet-Zao, 2024. Zao Wou-Ki © ProLitteris, Zurich, 2025. Image courtesy of M+, Hong Kong |
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