Who’s Selling Art at the May 2025 Auctions in New York?

It’s springtime in the art world, and that can mean only one thing. Not the Venice Biennale, though that is no doubt where many dealers, collectors, and artists are this week. No, we’re talking about the May marquee sales.

This year’s sales arrive, as always, at something of an inflection point for the market. Following two years of sales declines, the global art market returned to modest growth of 4 percent last year, according to the most recent Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report. The total sales figure of $59.6 billion was buoyed not by collectors piling back into contemporary art but by a surge of high-quality consignments in the November sales, namely that of Leonard Lauder’s collection at Sotheby’s, which was headlined by a $236.4 million Klimt.

While there are no works in the spring sales season expected to approach that eye-watering result, that doesn’t mean there aren’t trophy works. The major houses seem to have received the message: Collectors want artists with deep, stable markets and artworks with established, top-shelf provenance. Thankfully, for them, works from some of the most storied collections have shaken loose.

Christie’s will be offering 16 lots from the estate of S. I. Newhouse, topped by a Constantin Brâncuși sculpture, Danaïde (ca. 1913), and a Jackson Pollock painting, Number 7A, 1948, which are estimated at $100 million each. The house is also offering three lots from the collection of former Museum of Modern Art board president Agnes Gund, the most expensive of which is a 1964 Mark Rothko work No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe), estimated at $80 million. Christie’s rounds out its evening sales with a group of Gerhard Richter paintings from the collection of Marian Goodman, who died in January. The top piece in that grouping carries a $50 million estimate.

Not to be outdone, Sotheby’s has its own Rothko trophy work on offer, the 1957 painting Brown and Blacks in Reds, estimated at $100 million. That work is one of 24 on offer from the collection of the late dealer and financier Robert Mnuchin. There is also a second Rothko, No. 1 (1949), estimated at $15 million to $20 million. Sotheby’s is also offering some 50 works from the collection of David and Shoshanna Wingate, including the Giacometti sculpture La Clairière (Composition avec neuf figures), estimated between $18 million and $25 million.

Those are all the big-name consignors announced, and touted, by the auction houses. What about the unnamed consignors for other top lots in the sales? Well, ARTnews can reveal more than a few. (Note: As always, none of the auction houses will confirm or deny any consignors.)

At the top of the pile is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s monumental 1983 painting Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown), set for Sotheby’s contemporary art evening sale on May 14, with an estimate of $45 million. Several sources told ARTnews that the consignor is, in fact, John Sayegh-Belchatowski. The painting last sold to an unnamed buyer for $14.6 million at Christie’s London in 2013; at the time, the Baer Faxt reported that Sayegh-Belchatowski was the buyer. And while the collector did not respond to a request for comment, he posted about the work on Instagram shortly after the consignment was announced. His Instagram profile picture is also of the work, from when it was on view at Switzerland’s Fondation Beyeler.

Also in that Sotheby’s sale is Elizabeth Peyton’s 1996 painting Earl’s Court (Liam + Noel), carrying an estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million. That work appears to be from the collection of New York–based neurosurgeon and collector Frank Moore and his late wife Nina, who appeared on the 2025 edition of the ARTnews Top 200 list. Per Sotheby’s, the work was last sold in 1998; a catalogue for the 2008 New Museum exhibition “Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton” lists the Moores as the lenders of that work.

One last reveal for that Sotheby’s sale: Agnes Martin’s 1981 work Untitled #10, which carries a $7 million to $10 million estimate, was sold to its current owner in 1998 by Sperone Westwater. Per Tiffany Bell’s catalogue raisonné for the artist, first published in 2017, the work is owned by Richard I. Furman.

One of the top lots in Christie’s 20th century evening sale on May 18, Andy Warhol’s 1963 work Double Elvis [Ferus Type] has a considerably longer history. Passing through no fewer than a dozen hands in its 60-plus years in existence, including Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend, the work was most famously on view in Las Vegas’s Palms Casino Resort, as part of an art-focused revamp of the Old Vegas icon after its purchase by Station Casinos for $313 million. Brothers Frank J. Fertitta III and Lorenzo Fertitta, the CEO and president and the chairman, respectively, of Station, are noted art collectors, with an emphasis on American Pop art and Abstract Expressionism. Several sources confirmed to ARTnews that the Fertittas are the consignors of Double Elvis.

In Christie’s day sales are several works that appear to be consigned by ARTnews Top 200 collector Elie Khouri. First is the 2010 Lynette Yiadom-Boakye painting Shoot the Desperate, Hug the Needy, estimated at $700,000 to $1 million. That work was originally bought by movie mogul Michael Lynne and his wife Ninah from New York dealer Jack Shainman in 2010. However, at some point he returned it to Shainman, who then sold it to Khouri in 2018. The Dubai-based collector proudly posted it to Instagram in 2019, and last year the painting was shown hanging in his home in an interview in Frieze magazine. (Khouri declined to comment.)

The Yiadom-Boakye work is listed as “Property from a Distinguished Collection”; other works in that sale carrying the same designation are Richard Prince’s 2005 painting My Mother-in-Law, estimated at $120,000 to $180,000, which was last purchased at Christie’s London in 2017, and a 2021 mixed-media piece by Alex Da Corte, The Sexy Alphabet Dream, estimated at $70,000 to $100,000.

And if you are wondering who is behind the mystery collection carrying the appellation “A Matter of Seeing: Property from a Distinguished Collection” in Christie’s postwar and contemporary art day sale, ARTnews has heard from a reliable source that it is none other than Ronald Lauder. All 18 works from Lauder, according to auction house’s provenance records, were originally owned by the Estée Lauder Company. The works are mostly works on paper and some screen prints, including an untitled Brice Marden work made between 1965 and 1967, estimated at $200,000 to $300,000; a graphite seascape by Vija Celmins from 1972, with an estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million; and a deep red canvas covered in teal spots by Larry Poons, painted in 1965, estimated at $400,000 to $600,000.

Lastly, Phillips may be trying to catch some of the buzz from Sotheby’s Mnuchin sale by designating its untitled 1948 Pollock painting as “Property Formerly from the Collection of Robert Mnuchin.” The work was indeed in the late dealer’s collection from 1990 until November 2024, when it came up for sale at Phillips. It failed to sell. Then things got complicated when the third-party guarantor, David Mimran, son of billionaire Jean-Claude Mimran, allegedly failed to pony up the funds; Phillips is currently suing Mimran. The painting now carries an estimate of $7 million to $10 million.