From the November 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
While November might conjure images of grey days and bleak weather to many readers of Apollo, this year it also promises the closest thing the art world has to sunny uplands. The November auctions in New York are looking better than many recent auction seasons. By better, I mean that there are more high-quality works of art presented for sale than there have been recently. The notable uptick has, as many commentators have pointed out, been driven by single-owner collections.
As the announcements began in the late summer, it seemed as though Christie’s was ‘winning’ the auction season. The collections of Elaine Wynn and Robert Weiss, among others, suggest that auctions of 20th-century art might be back to bringing in around $50 million for a single work. Wynn bought Francis Bacon’s portrait of Lucian Freud, which she has donated to LACMA, for $142 million in 2013 and, while it might not be for sale, it does suggest the realms of value that her collection comes from.
All of this, however, was blown out of the water by Sotheby’s when it announced that it would be selling 55 works from the collection of Leonard Lauder. The auction is expected to make around $400 million. While Lauder gave away swathes of his extraordinary collection to museums including the Met, he was such a comprehensive and dedicated collector that even a crumb of his collection is often worth more than whatever else comes to market – though it remains to be seen if this will bring in profits to the auction house or just earn it market share. A lot will depend upon the deals it has done around guarantees, but that will be a conversation for another day. If all goes well, this sale will be considered an excellent augur for Sotheby’s New York move to the Breuer building.
At the moment, the talk is that this could be a turning point for the beleaguered art market. But it is worth considering that the market is not suffering merely because of buyer confidence; it is profoundly entwined with geopolitical events and developments there might prove more important than any one auction result. It is also worth remembering that the sale of Yves Saint Laurent’s collection in 2009 managed to be the record-breaking sale for a single-owner collection while doing nothing to stimulate the rest of the market for the remainder of the year.
I hope this doomsaying is unnecessary. And there are certainly green shoots elsewhere. The Old Masters market seems to be picking up faster than the modern and contemporary markets. Even six months ago Old Masters were showing 10 per cent growth compared to the flatlining or worse of those other categories. Anecdotally, Old Master dealers and auction house specialists are talking up a surprise growth in younger clients. It would be pleasing if works of art that have been so long ignored suddenly become valued at what they’re worth, but it would also be nice to see the market embrace a sense of adventure again. That’s the thing about the art market: no one can ever be quite sure what makes it go round. All eyes will be on New York.
From the November 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.