ART

Buyers at Sotheby’s in New York City paid $1.7 million for 396 lots of animation artwork from the Disney/Amblin hit “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” Wednesday in the first major sale of art from a contemporary film. The most expensive item, a cel of the assembled ‘Toon characters from the movie’s finale, brought $50,600. Its pre-sale estimate was $15,000-$20,000. Each cel was mounted against a still from the corresponding live action scene from the film. The record for a piece of animation artwork was set in May, when a Canadian collector paid $286,000 for a cel and background from Disney’s “Orphan’s Benefit” (1934) at Christie’s East.