Trex dinosaur art12/3/2023 ![]() ![]() Things changed, though, Barrett tells me, in the wake of the Jurassic Park film, which, directed by Steven Spielberg, reflected recent rejuvenation within the field of palaeontology. Historically, says the Natural History Museum’s senior dinosaur specialist Paul Barrett, the “primary market” for specimens (aside from a handful of “dedicated private collectors”) was museums – perhaps because, for the wider public, these extinct reptiles were still “viewed as a giant metaphor for failure”. These days, it turns out, it isn’t just collectors of contemporary art who covet dinosaur fossils. Earlier this autumn, for instance, while reporting on the Frieze Masters art fair, I could hardly miss a plant-eating Camptosaurus skeleton (the name means “flexible lizard”) offered by David Aaron gallery, which otherwise specialises in antiquities and early Islamic art. The sale of Stan had repercussions even for art critics like me who seldom come across dinosaurs. ![]() The winning telephone bid, which Hyslop conveyed, reportedly came from Abu Dhabi’s department for culture and tourism, which plans to display Stan in a new natural history museum due to open in 2025. In fact, Christie’s was replicating in Asia the strategy behind a successful sale held two years ago in North America, when an exceptional T-Rex fossil nicknamed “Stan”, discovered in 1987 in South Dakota, sold in New York at another auction of 20th-century art for $31.8 million – a record for a dinosaur specimen. Erm, wasn’t the Renaissance artist a vegetarian? He went as far as to describe the prehistoric beast as “the Leonardo of the dinosaur world”. No other dinosaur, he argues, has the “brand recognition” of a T-Rex, which is why he was hoping that Shen would appeal to collectors of “blue-chip” art. Dinosaurs, it seems, now roam a novel environment – the habitat of fine art.įor Christie’s specialist James Hyslop, it makes some sense. Apparently, the latest fad among the super-rich is to display fossilised skeletons alongside paintings and sculptures. It follows another sale held over the summer by the auction house, also in New York, of a 22ft-long Gorgosaurus (a predatory relative of T-Rex that lived approximately 80 million years ago), which went for $6.1 million.īut perhaps more astonishing than these immoderate prices is that, in Hong Kong, Shen would have been the star lot of an auction of 20th and 21st-century art, rather than a natural history sale. Next month, though, in a single-lot sale in New York, Sotheby’s still expects to sell a T-Rex skull (which it’s calling Maximus) for up to $20 million. Supposedly, the consignor, following a change of heart, had decided instead to lend Shen to a museum – although, according to reports in America, there has been controversy over how much of the skeleton was fake. Today, as well as being scary, a T-Rex’s remains can be staggeringly expensive: later this month, a 40ft-long T-Rex skeleton nicknamed Shen (a Chinese word for “Godlike”) was set to be offered for sale by Christie’s in Hong Kong, with an upper estimate of $25 million (£21.2 million) – until news broke earlier this week that the lot had been withdrawn. In a new television documentary, Into Dinosaur Valley, aired tonight, historian Dan Snow recounts the story of its discovery, as well that of various other dinosaurs. His coinage was an inspired piece of marketing: the first thing many think of when they hear the word “dinosaur” is the frightening silhouette (thrashing tail, powerful hind legs, bone-crunching mandible) of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, which lived in what is now the American West near the end of the Cretaceous period, around 66 to 68 million years ago. King of the Tyrant Lizards: that’s the translation of the Greek-and-Latin name bestowed, in 1905, on a newly discovered species of dinosaur by the president of the American Museum of Natural History, palaeontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn. ![]()
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