Courtesy St. Louis Art Museum

The St. Louis Art Museum delayed groundbreaking on its $125 million building expansion due to the worsening economy.

Jeff Koons Jackson Pollock Edgar Degas Vincent van Gogh Juan Gris Kasimir Malevich Edvard Munch Bonhams Moves a $1.91 Million Munch Madonna

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At Sotheby’s, a Munch and a Degas went for nearly $40 million each, and a Malevich for $60 million, but a third of the lots in the sale failed to find buyers. Christie’s may have fared even worse, despite the sale of a Juan Gris painting for $20.8 million; at Wednesday night’s sale of two private collections only 44 percent the 82 artworks on offer found buyers.

A sale of Asian art at Sotheby’s London on the evening of November 5 marked another disappointment, with only 67 percent of the lots finding buyers. On the morning of the sale a collector caught market jitters and withdrew a Ming Dynasty Buddha valued at $3.95 million.

Meanwhile, a woman who bought a Jackson Pollock for five bucks is now trying to sell it for $50 million. Good luck in this economy. Switzerland returned 4,400 stolen antiquities to Italy. And officials in China believe that bronzes from the collection of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent that originally came from an imperial summer residence called Yuanmingyuan were illegally exported and are fuming at their upcoming sale at Christie’s. Yuanmingyuan was known as the "Versailles of the east.”

Speaking of Versailles, remember the Jeff Koons exhibition there that drew all those crazy protesters? Its run has been extended by almost a month, to January 4, because of high attendance — 250,000 visitors since it opened in September.

So, if you want to attract visitors in hordes you could install metal balloon dogs next to 17th-century mirrors, or, like the city of Munich, you could just turn a former public toilet into a museum.  

Or you could just attract violence. A London gallery showing images of veiled Muslims by an artist who claims to be a practicing Muslim herself had its windows and doors smashed in. (Well, okay, they weren’t just veiled Muslims. One depicted the artist wearing a head scarf emblazoned with Kate Moss’s bare breast and another had the artist in a T-shirt that said “I love jihad.”)

Two Van Gogh paintings thought to be fake were deemed authentic. And Afghanistan announced to the world: No more looting! We’re building museums.

The St. Louis Art Museum delayed groundbreaking on its $125 million building expansion due to the worsening economy — no money has come in during the past few months. And the Art Gallery of Ontario may be opening its flashy new Frank Gehry building.

But the recession may put paid to the architecture of excess, or so architect David Chipperfield told Bloomberg. “At a time when people are worried about other things, those things become really irritating, and probably less relevant.”

If so, someone had better phone Abu Dhabi fast. A tower there is looking to beat out that thing in Pisa for the title of world’s leaningest tower; in computer renderings it looks like a model poised contrapuntally at the end of the catwalk. Sexy time.

Sarah Douglas is Staff Writer at Art+Auction. She blogs at "The Appraisal."