Gallery Report: Currier & Ives print rolls to $62,500 at auction

ATLANTA – At the start of each month, ACN columnist Ken Hall gathers top auction highlights from around the United States and beyond. Here’s what made headlines since last month’s Gallery Report (prices include the buyer’s premium unless stated otherwise):

1868 Currier & Ives print, $62,500, Swann Galleries

An 1868 print by Currier & Ives, titled Across the Continent/Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, sold for $62,500 at a Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books Sale held Dec. 13 by Swann Galleries in New York. Also, a double-page engraved map of eastern Canada and the Atlantic seaboard by Samuel de Champlain & Pierre du Val (Paris, 1664) brought $22,500; and 100 hand-colored lithographs by Honore Daumier & Charles Philipon (Paris, 1836-38) hit $18,750.

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Group raises $59,000 to save historic Georgia gas station

Old gas stations, like the one in Biggs Junction, Oregon depicted in this historical photo, have all but disappeared from America’s landscape. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers and Matthew Bullock Auctioneers

PERRY, Ga. (AP) – Fenced in as a potential safety hazard, the vacant former gas station where Depression-era motorists once fueled their Model T Fords in this rural Georgia city was facing demolition until a group of preservationists raised $59,000 to help save it.

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Uffizi urges Germany to return painting stolen by Nazis

Night view of the 16th-century Galleria degli Uffizi in the historic center of Florence, Italy. May 25, 2006 photo by Chris Wee, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Night view of the 16th-century Galleria degli Uffizi in the historic center of Florence, Italy. May 25, 2006 photo by Chris Wee, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Night view of the 16th-century Galleria degli Uffizi in the historic center of Florence, Italy. May 25, 2006 photo by Chris Wee, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

MILAN (AP) – The director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence is urging Germany to return a Dutch masterpiece stolen by Nazi troops during World War II, dramatizing its absence by hanging a black and white photo of the work with the label “Stolen” in three languages.

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Fossils of prehistoric pig-like animals ID’d in Tennessee

This fossilized skeleton at the Austin Zoo (Texas) comes from a Mylohyus nasutus, who would have been a cousin to the Mylohyus elmorei. Photo by Reynosa Blogs, Tamaulipas, Mexico, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (AP) – East Tennessee State University says its researchers have discovered fossils of two extinct prehistoric, pig-looking species that previously had never been found in the Appalachian region.

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