Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are 16 gallery spaces: five in New York; three in London; two in Paris; one each in Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Rome, Athens, Geneva and Hong Kong. Gagosian Gallery aims to maintain the price level of its artists by actively playing a role at art auctions. When Christie's established an auction record for Henri Matisse by selling a bronze relief for $48.8 million in 2010, it was Gagosian that bought the work.[17] Also, Gagosian Gallery purchased Ed Ruscha's Angry Because It’s Plaster, Not Milk (1965) for $3.2 million at Phillips de Pury in 2010, again establishing an auction record for that artist.[18] Not long after joining Gagosian Gallery in 2003, the painter John Currin made his auction record of $847,500; his highest price before was a little over half that.