In our latest "Meet the Appraiser" video, we sit down with fine art appraiser Larissa Wild, ISA CAPP. In addition to being Sarah's dear friend and Co-Host of The Art Elevator Podcast, Larissa is the Founder and Principal Appraiser of Rocky Mountain Art Appraisal Group. Larissa is a Certified Member of the International Society of Appraisers with the Private Client Services designation. In her appraisal firm Larissa works closely with high-net-worth individuals, families, family offices, trust and estate attorneys, CPAs, banks, and institutions, providing independent, research-driven appraisal reports designed to withstand scrutiny in tax, legal, and insurance contexts.
NC Wyeth Market Update
In our latest video we look at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania artist N.C. Wyeth. Patrick McIntyre leads our review of N.C. Wyeth's life and career. We then dive into a market update with an illustrated exploration of both recent and historic record sales of Wyeth's paintings and discuss what the current market for his work looks like.
Do you have artworks by N.C. Wyeth or other Wyeth family members such as Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth in need of appraisal? In light of recent market activity, now would be an excellent time to update insurance appraisals for any Wyeths in your collection. We'd be delighted to chat with you about your appraisal needs and invite you to reach out to us at info@afhappraisal.com to schedule a conversation.
Meet the Appraiser | Leiza McKenna of Chase Art Advisory & Valuation
In our latest "Meet the Appraiser" video, we sit down with fine art, stained glass, and insurance expert Leiza McKenna of Chase Art Advisory & Valuation. Leiza is an Accredited Member of the Appraisers Association of America with deep expertise in stained glass, Christian art, and religious art and sacred objects across many different denominations and faiths. She is also a specialist in appraising African-American, African Contemporary Art, and 19th and 20th century American Art.
Patrick and Sarah chat with Leiza about her work as an insurance professional for an insurance company that specializes in coverage of religious buildings and their associated valuable personal property such as stained glass, Torahs, pipe organs, church silver, paintings, and other significant sacred items. In the discussion Leiza shares important tips for churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, and other religious organizations so they can better assess their insurance needs and make sure precious items are well protected. Leiza is based in Houston, Texas and travels frequently for her clientele located across the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. She can be reached at info@chaseartadvisory.com through her company Chase Art Advisory & Valuation.
Market Recap | The Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi
On the occasion of the opening of Noguchi’s New York at the Noguchi Museum in Queens last night (February 3, 2026), I want to briefly share some notes on recent auction sales of the work of Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988). Of course many different design objects by Noguchi, especially Akari lights and myriad tables, are always percolating in the secondary market, but for this post I thought I’d focus on the area of his practice that I am most familiar and connected to; his sculpture.
In doing this I realized that recapping Noguchi’s market from late 2025 alone would give readers a solid overall sense of the wide variety of his sculptural output. The diversity of styles, techniques, textures, and materials used by Noguchi over the course of his long career to create his “fine art,” let alone his design, is dizzying. This limited approach will also leave open the future prospect of independently addressing the market for his design (a task that we here at Artifactual History Appraisal welcome with open arms).
The most recent sale I want to look at is Mountains Forming, a galvanized steel construction produced in the early 1980s. The work sold at Christie’s in December as part of a design sale (a noteworthy marketing decision). The five foot work straddles the influence of both industrial design and a wide array of Minimalist-adjacent objects from roughly Caro through Serra, for which the earlier work of Noguchi had been arguably foundational. The work sold for $88,900, including the buyer’s premium. This was an encouraging result because the artist’s galvanized steel works can sometimes be a difficult sell. For example, earlier in the season, in late September, a different galvanized steel work by the artist had gone unsold at Freeman’s while carrying the same estimate as the Christie’s work, $50,000-70,000.
Mountains Forming
Going a few weeks further back in time, Bonham’s offered items from the tasteful collection of the late Gene Hackman (rest in peace, Royal Tenenbaum!). Among these was an early Noguchi plaster bust, circa 1930, which sold for $17,920, including fees to the buyer. Noguchi’s portrait busts were made in the period after he had returned from “interning” with Constantin Brancusi in Paris in the late 1920s. A lot of his portraits depict well known or influential people and the artist’s focus on them makes sense in light of his deeply rich social life, although the vestigial Greenbergianism in me has always perceived them as representing somewhat of a retreat from the vanguard formalist tendencies he had nursed under Brancusi’s tutelage.
Francise Clow Braggiotti
Next, despite its grimace-inducing title, Sharpshooter (Homage to Martin Luther King) sold for $23,750 at Heritage Auctions on November 19. The work, more or less an abstracted gun, was created a year prior to the civil rights leader’s assassination. It only gained an explicit association with King when Noguchi donated it to a MoMA auction benefitting King’s Southern Christian Leadership Coalition in 1969. Coincidentally, a version of this work is included in Noguchi’s New York and its wall text states that despite its poorly aged title, Noguchi was aiming to be deliberately provocative in the face of the ongoing Vietnam War, which both he and King strongly opposed. PS: there’s also an “appraisal” on file in the Museum’s digital archives from Noguchi’s dealer at this time that more or less reads in its entirety, “I say this is worth $1,000,” on nice crisp letterhead. Oh, the unspoilt innocence of the pre-USPAP era!
Sharpshooter (An Homage to Martin Luther King, Jr.)
In the public imagination Noguchi’s interlocking sculptures are arguably his most widely known, likely due to their presence within the majority of college textbooks surveying modern art. In terms of Noguchi’s market, this recognition can frequently tip into desirability, and along with it higher prices, or at least in this instance it does. The result achieved at Sotheby’s for Fishface, a six-piece slate construction from the mid-1940s, a fertile period for American art in general and a charged one for Noguchi in particular, illustrates this point well. That the lot was guaranteed by Sotheby’s certainly didn’t hurt. It sold for $2.6 million, over three times the amount of its initial high estimate of $800,000.
Fishface
And last but far from least, the crown jewel of the Noguchis appearing at auction late last year is the granite Myo, once owned by John D. Rockefeller III. This six foot stone sold for $7.6 million at Christie's on November 17. It’s an earlier representative of one of the richest veins of Noguchi’s career (at least in my opinion), his late granites and basalts. Artifactual History recorded some reflections on the creation and sale of this particular work back in November for anyone seeking more detail on this particular work.
Myo