Christie's Reads the Room: Pop Culture Gets Its Own Department

A single sale room did the convincing. After the Jim Irsay memorabilia auction brought in $105 million, Christie's specialist Bonnie Brennan said she had never witnessed anything like the energy inside it. The house has now moved to formalize that appetite, launching a dedicated Pop Culture division rather than treating such sales as one-off events. For collectors who have watched memorabilia edge toward the same serious market treatment as fine art and design, the signal is hard to miss.

With reporting from ARTnews.