MAY It was a bumper year at the auction house, with record sales for works by artists including Gustav Klimt. A Picasso portrait of his lover Dora Maar sold for $95.2m (£51.8m) in May, the second highest amount ever paid for a painting at auction.

The New York Sun sang the praises of an exhibition opening at the New York Public Library: "Once again, the New York Public Library has brought us one of the city's best museum shows outside a museum. 'French Book Art: Artists and Poets in Dialogue', which opens tomorrow, includes collaborative books by Malraux and Leger, Eluard and Picasso, Apollinaire and Dufy, Breton and Giacometti, as well as works by Chagall, de Chirico, Derain, Matisse, Man Ray, and Masson. A bibliophile's dream, the exhibition is a veritable wonderland tour of some of the most beautiful and pioneering collaborative books made between poets and artists during the last 125 years."