Christie's Creates a Separate Global Pop Culture Department

The auction house Christie's has created a separate global pop culture department, which will hold several sales a year and offer objects connected with cinema and television, music and musical instruments, sport, science and technology, natural history, fashion and popular design.

Christie's spent several years studying demand for the category. The final test was the sale of the collection of Jim Irsay, owner of the American Football League club the Indianapolis Colts, who died in May 2025. Over five auctions this year Christie's sold 404 lots from the Irsay collection for $105.3 million. The auction house stated that no collection of memorabilia had ever brought in such a sum. Over the decades Irsay had gathered presidential documents, the original typescript manuscript of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, famous guitars and other items