AMERICAN ART IN NYC A year ago, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s held New York sales of American art, which like many auction categories had been riding pretty high. Totals were about $55 million for both houses, coincidentally, with a rather dry Andrew Wyeth painting of a pensive old man going for a record $10.3 million, a Mary Cassatt mother-and-child pulling down $6.2 million and an Albert Bierstadt sunset bringing in almost $4.9 million.
