ITHACA | ISSUE 01: The May Market
New York just closed a $2.1 billion auction week. Here is what collectors need to know.
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INTRODUCING ITHACA
You may know us as 3 Thirty One Collection. This is our next chapter.
Ithaca was built from experience, not institution. From a collector’s beginning, where the learning is slower, the access is harder won, and the knowledge and resources that shape a collection are rarely easy to find. We have navigated every stage of that journey, building a collection, expertise, resources, and relationships along the way. This platform is everything we gathered, now passed forward.
A gallery, an advisory, and a resource for collectors at every stage, from a first acquisition to the stewardship of an established collection.
THE MARKET
A Historical Week In New York and What it Actually Means
Christie’s delivered one of the most significant single nights in auction history. On May 18, the house crossed $1.1 billion in under three hours. It was only the second time in its 259-year history that threshold has been reached in one session. The evening combined two landmark collections.
The S.I. Newhouse estate anchored the sale with 16 lots totaling $630.8 million. Every one sold. Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948, sold for $181.2 million, nearly three times the artist’s previous record and the fourth highest auction price ever achieved. Brancusi’s bronze Danaïde sold for $107.6 million, making him only the second sculptor after Giacometti to cross $100 million at auction. Miró set a new record with Portrait de Madame K. at $53.5 million, surpassing his previous high of $37 million set at Sotheby’s London in 2012. Having sold from his collection since 2018, Newhouse’s estate has now brought over $1 billion to auction across four separate sales, more than any single collector in postwar art market history.
The same evening, three works from the personal collection of the late Agnes Gund, former president of MoMA, sold for a combined $150.8 million. The top lot was Rothko’s No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe), 1964, at $98.4 million, a new auction record for the artist. Gund had purchased it directly from Rothko’s studio in 1967. A Cy Twombly from 1961 sold within its $40 to $60 million estimate. These were works Gund lived with for decades, and that provenance carried a premium the room recognized immediately.
Sotheby’s ran a parallel two-week season from its new Breuer building headquarters on Madison Avenue, closing at $908.6 million, up 82% versus May 2025. The contemporary opening night on May 14 delivered $433.1 million, led by Rothko’s Brown and Blacks in Red from the Robert Mnuchin collection at $85.8 million and Basquiat’s Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) at $52.7 million. The modern evening on May 19 posted $303.9 million with a 97.6% sell-through rate, topped by Matisse’s La Chaise lorraine at $48.4 million, the second highest Matisse price ever at auction. Phillips achieved $115.2 million, more than double its May 2025 result.
The headline is liquidity returning at the top of the market. The qualification every serious collector needs to hold alongside that headline: below the trophy level, results were uneven. That distinction defines the opportunity right now.
Single-Owner, Impeccable Provenance: The Format That Wins Right Now
The Marian Goodman collection sale made the structural argument clearly. Eight Gerhard Richter paintings from the late dealer’s personal collection totaled $78.8 million. The star lot, Kerze (Candle) 1982, sold for $35.1 million, below its $50 million high estimate, though six of the other seven Richters exceeded their estimates. The full evening posted $162.7 million, Christie’s strongest 21st-century evening result in New York since 2021.
The pattern is consistent across every major consignment this season. Works with deep provenance, a defined collecting narrative, and institutional exhibition history are outperforming. Single-owner collections with a story collectors can trace and trust have become the dominant format for marquee auction week. That is not a seasonal preference. It is where the market has settled after three years of contraction and will continue to define the consignment landscape going forward.
The Truth About the Middle Market
Below the record-setting top lots, results were significantly softer. Stingel, Prince, and Bradford all sold below estimate. A Jeff Koons silkscreen sold at half its pre-sale value. Works in the $100,000 to $1 million range, the segment where most serious private collectors operate, cleared soft or failed to find buyers entirely.
This is not a quality problem. These are established artists with decades of institutional validation and permanent collection placements globally. Buyer conviction at that price point has simply not returned at the same pace as the trophy level. That gap between fundamental strength and current market pricing is precisely where informed collectors have historically built significant collections.
One Sale In London That Every Collector Should Be Watching
Anita and Poju Zabludowicz will sell £15 million ($20.1 million) across 106 works at Christie’s London on June 25. Regular fixtures on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, the Zabludowiczes operated one of Europe’s most active private museums for fifteen years before closing it in 2023. The top lot is Philip Guston’s Mirror Head (1977), estimated at up to £5.5 million. The roster includes Richard Prince, Henry Taylor, Beatriz Milhazes, Takashi Murakami, Damien Hirst, Rose Wylie, and Charline von Heyl.
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Ithaca Gallery is a multidisciplinary art gallery and advisory working with collectors across acquisitions, private sales, consignments, collection management and more. This is our launch issue. To receive monthly market intelligence, collector insights, and inventory previews directly to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter.
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