For The First Time, All Over Again

So Christie’s bought Haunch of Venison, which will open an outpost in Rockefeller Center, the spectacular, near-raw space where the Judd Foundation pieces were previewed? Great.
But is it, as the NYT calls it, “the first time, an auction house has acquired a gallery primarily to enter the market for new works by living artists”?
Have I just been in deep freeze, or didn’t Sotheby’s buy all–or was it half?–of Deitch in the late nineties for…one million dollars?