Most expensive sculpture

At Christie’s auction house in New York, USA, on 11 May 2015, Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti’s 1947 work L’homme au doigt (Pointing Man) was sold for $141,285,000 (£91.4 m), the most ever paid for a sculpture at auction. The 180-cm bronze statue shows a man – tall and spindly (Giacometti’s trademark style) – with one arm extended in a pointing gesture. It is believed that the left arm was originally curled around a second figure, which Giacometti subsequently removed.

Created at short notice for an exhibition in New York in 1947, L’homme au doigt was reportedly made in a single night between midnight and 9 a.m. Giacometti produced a total of six casts of the piece, most of which are in museums around the world.