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Miguel Abreu 36 Orchard Street, near Hester Street, Lower East Side [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TODD WATERBURY'S apartment is just perfect. No, really. It's not simply that his book collection is restricted to titles with black, gray or white bindings, and stacked, jacketless, in neat horizontal rows (and mostly reflects the work of artists who are themselves interested in stacking, grid-making, mapmaking or otherwise marking time and space in obsessive and orderly ways). Or that nearly every item here (the sofa, the chairs, Mr. Waterbury's suits) is also either black, gray or white, including the paint on the walls (gray with white trim) and most of the artwork, like a painting by Peter Wegner, Mr. Waterbury's best friend, of a simple font chart from the 1940s showing black type on a white background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LONDON -- Just as the financial markets were heading for disaster in 2008, the British artist Damien Hirst snubbed his dealers and persuaded Sotheby's here to sell 223 primarily new artworks. There were dead animals -- sharks, zebras, piglets and even a calf -- floating in giant glass tanks of formaldehyde; cabinets filled with diamonds; and cigarette butts. And paintings galore: spin paintings, spot paintings, paintings with butterflies pinned under glass. More than 21,000 people flocked to Sotheby's to see the preview exhibition. The two-day sale in September, conducted against the backdrop of the unfolding world financial crisis, brought in a total of $200.7 million. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]