Nicole Kidman and Constantin Brancusi—now that’s an unexpected pair.
The award-winning actor appears in a new Christie’s ad promoting the upcoming auction of a sculpture by Brancusi from the late media mogul S.I. Newhouse‘s collection. Titled Danaïde (1913), the bronze head will be offered for sale with the potentially record-setting estimate of $100 million on May 18 in New York. Newhouse bought it for $18.2 million in 2002, the highest price for a sculpture at the time.
Christie’s released the ad yesterday on its website, YouTube channel, and Instagram. The nearly two-minute film opens with the actor striding into the auction house’s Rockefeller Center headquarters in a pair of Louboutin stilettos and taking the elevator to a private viewing room where Danaïde awaits on a pedestal behind a wall of white curtains.
Nicole Kidman with Constantin Brancusi’s Danaïde (ca. 1913). Photo: Hunter Abrams, courtesy of Christie’s.
Once inside, she interacts with the work from a respectful distance. As the camera zooms in, the black-and-white footage flickers with a kaleidoscope of imagery of classical, modern and contemporary sculptures. You can glimpse an Alberto Giacometti chariot and a Jeff Koons. The sound of a heartbeat alternates with hollow footsteps, and eventually the David Bowie song “Golden Years” rolls in. As Kidman circles the work, she ruffles her hair, gazing intently at the work, then seductively into the camera. By the time credits roll, she is literally floored.
As far as promotional materials go, this is certainly a flex. (It’s also the second recent celebrity appearance at the storied auction house, which hosted King Charles III and Queen Camilla on April 29.)
The campaign was a brainchild of Tobias Meyer, a former Sotheby’s star auctioneer and longtime art advisor to Newhouse, who died in 2017. Since then, Meyer has advised the billionaire’s estate, brokering the about-$200 million sale of Shot Orange Marilyn (1964) by Andy Warhol to hedge fund manager Ken Griffin and the 2019 sale of Koons’s Rabbit (1986) at Christie’s for $91 million, the highest price paid at auction for a living artist.
Nicole Kidman with Constantin Brancusi’s Danaïde (c. 1913). Photo: Hunter Abrams, courtesy of Christie’s.
Meyer said he met Kidman at billionaire Barry Diller’s lunch around the Oscars earlier this year.
Two years ago, he saw grainy, black-and-white footage of Lee Miller, the model and photographer, caressing Brancusi’s white marble sculpture. It was included in the 2024 Brancusi exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In the parting shot, Miller turns her head towards the camera and smiles.
“And I looked at it and I said, ‘That’s Nicole!’” Meyer said in a phone call today. “We need to get her, because she is the Brancusi.”
Meyer knew that Kidman was going to be in New York for the Met Gala in early May. He also knew that Christie’s owner François Pinault was an investor in Creative Artists Agency, which represents the actor. “So, I said, let’s ask him,” he recalled.
Constantin Brancusi, Danaïde (c. 1913). Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd 2026.
In early May, Kidman spent a day filming the ad at Christie’s headquarters, according to the auction house’s spokesperson, who declined to say if the actor was paid or how much the segment cost to produce.
“If something is as great as the Brancusi, you can be very creative about it,” said Meyer, who had taken Shot Orange Marilyn to the Morning Show when Sotheby’s had it for sale. Some people grumbled it was vulgar, he said, but Newhouse ended up buying the painting for a then-record $17.3 million.
“When you have an object of such unbelievable beauty, it wants this kind of adulation,” Meyer said. “And, you know, with Nicole Kidman, she is that.”
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