The Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee has made a huge splash with his show, Animatus, running at the Natural History Museum in Basel until August 31. Lee, who represented Korea at the 2007 Venice Biennale, makes “skeletal sculptures” of cartoon characters – a cross between palaeontology and Looney Tunes. In the museum’s exhibition gallery, Lee has installed a skeletal Tom about to pounce on Jerry, a grinning Donald Duck and a toothy Bugs Bunny, all reproduced just as the museum would its own specimens, along with preparatory drawings. His sculptures have seduced the British collector Frank Cohen, who bought the Tom and Jerry, and the Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner for £80,000 each, while the US collector Beth Rudin DeWoody acquired Bugs Bunny for £50,000, along with the accompanying drawing.

Some weeks ago I wrote about a Persian carpet that I though might fetch more than £500,000 at auction. Well, it has just sold in New York for £2.3m, a new auction record for a carpet. The rug came from the estate of tobacco heiress Doris Duke and had actually been walked on since she acquired it in 1990 for $506,000. Who bought it? No one is saying, though some think it could have been Sheikh Saud Al-Thani, cousin of the ruler of Qatar, who put together a wonderful textile collection for the new Museum of Islamic Art. The Italian dealer Moshe Tabibnia, who is buying for a private museum of antique carpets to be established in Milan, was also a bidder at the sale but missed out on the Duke piece. One thing is for sure, no one will be walking on it now.