Divorce battle spawns most expensive art auction ever at $922m

NEW YORK: Blue-chip treasures from one of Manhattan’s most acrimonious billionaire divorces on Monday night helped Sotheby’s achieve what it called a record total sale for a private collection of art at auction, $922 million, with fees.
Sotheby’s sold its second cache of trophy-name modern and contemporary works owned by real estate magnate Harry Macklowe and his former wife Linda, an honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for $246. 1 million.
The first installment of the sale, in November, raised $676. 1 million from 35 lots, topped by works by Mark Rothko ($82. 5 million) and Alberto Giacometti ($78. 4 million).
As is the nature of sequels, the second Macklowe sale, comprising 30 lots, wasn’t quite in that league, but works by Rothko at $48 million, Gerhard Richter at $30. 2 million and Andy Warhol at $18. 7 million pushed the final total, which, Sotheby’s said, eclipsed the sale of the Peggy and David Rockefeller Collection in 2018 for $835. 1 million, before inflation, at Christie’s.
The sale of the Macklowes’ prized artworks was the result of a New York court order in 2018. Exasperated by the feuding couple’s inability to agree how to divide their holdings, Justice Laura Drager of New York Supreme Court decided that the collection — then valued at more than $700 million — should be sold in a public auction. Although the Macklowes had originally shared a love of collecting — filling their homes in the Plaza and the Hamptons with paintings and sculptures — art be- came Linda Macklowe’s main passion. She had hoped to keep the major pieces of art, but because most of their assets were tied up in the art collection, that proved impossible.
“I never thought I’d see a sale of the Macklowe collection,” Harry Macklowe said in a postsale news conference. “I’m thrilled by it. Not by the economics but by the quality being recognized by collectors. Everybody endorsing the choices we made over the last 65 years, that was the greatest payback. ”