Hirst’s $100 Million Skull to Travel to Russia

ST. PETERSBURG—Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted platinum skull, which sold for $100 million to a group of unnamed investors including the artist himself this August, will go on display at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in May, reports Bloomberg. The work, titled For the Love of God, will be shown as part of the museum’s international contemporary art project 20/21, which is being launched at the end of this month.

The move follows a current trend in the art world that has auction houses and dealers bringing works to Russia, where an almost decade-long period of economic growth has resulted in a boom in art sales.

Gallery owner Larry Gagosian, who represents Hirst, currently the world’s most expensive living artist, in New York and London, told Bloomberg that Russian collectors don’t often come to New York, “so, based on the amount of business we've done in Russia over the past two or three years, it seemed a good idea to try to take it a step further.'”