On Thursday, Christie’s announced that it will sell dozens of works by artists including Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Giacometti, and Piet Mondrian from the collection of the late Barnes & Noble founder—and former ARTnews Top 200 collector—Leonard Riggio.
Valued at $250 million, the 30 or so works will go under the hammer during the house’s upcoming spring sales in New York.
The book mogul’s wife, Louise, is downsizing from their Park Avenue apartment—where the trove of works held court—after he passed last year.
“This is tough for me to say goodbye to old friends, but I will not put them in storage,” she said of the artworks, as reported by the New York Times. “They need to be seen.”
A Mondrian work that hung in the vestibule of the Riggio’s lux apartment is due to be the auction’s headline act, with a reported high estimate of over $51 million. (A similar painting by the artist titled Composition No. II sold for that record price at Sotheby’s in 2022.)
Christie’s won the tender after a bidding war with Sotheby’s. According to the New York Times, in a curious move, the latter house reportedly enlisted mega-gallery Pace to charm Louise Riggio, although Sotheby’s and Pace have so far declined to comment.
“We have a longstanding relationship with Christie’s,” she said.
As ARTnews’ Daniel Cassady wrote last week, Leonard Riggio “was a profound collector of the Minimalists and a driving force behind the establishment of Dia:Beacon in Upstate New York.” Among the treasures Riggio kept at his Bridgehampton home was Richard Serra’s 300-ton steel sculpture Sidewinder (1999), which was visible from space thanks to Google Earth satellites.
The Riggio sale will be a test for the art market’s health after several years of disappointing auction results, not helped by global conflict, last year’s US presidential campaign, and now, it seems, President Donald Trump’s plan to impose widespread tariffs.
Christie’s CEO Bonnie Brennan described the Riggios as “true collectors.”