The secondary market today is driven by two things: quality and prestige. Often those two things are tied together; after all, the most well respected collectors are usually those with the best collections. When such marquee collectors die, it’s inevitable that Christie’s and Sotheby’s try to outmanuever each other for the estates’ business, as seems to be the case right now over the collection of Barnes and Noble co-founder and former ARTnews Top 200 collector Leonard Riggio, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the negotiations.
Riggio, who passed away in August 2024, was a profound collector of the Minimalists and a driving force behind the establishment of Dia:Beacon in Upstate New York. It’s almost impossible to avoid mentioning that 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.
Among the more than 20 sculptures that graced the lawn of Riggio’s Hamptons estate were Willem de Kooning’s bronze sculpture Seated Woman (1969–81), Mark di Suvero’s Caramba (1984–90), Black Standing Nana (1993-1994) by Niki de Saint Phalle, and by Barry Flanagan’s rough and tumble dynamo The Boxing Ones (1989).
Riggio’s collection wasn’t limited to the towering and metallic, however. It had depth and crossed both schools of practice and cultural boundaries. He owned important works by Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Donald Judd, Chuck Close, and Walter De Maria as well as midcentury masters Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, and Arshile Gorky.
He also was passionate about the Italian Arte Povera movement. In 2019, the New York Times took a stroll through the Riggio manor out east and noted that the interior walls were “dominated” by “vibrant tapestries by Alighiero Boetti, distressed canvases by Alberto Burri, numbers from the Fibonacci sequence in blue neon by Mario Merz and reliefs in salt and Elmer’s glue on lead by Pier Paolo Calzolari.”
Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s declined to comment on any possible negotiations with the estate.
Securing an estate like Riggio’s can all but guarantee a successful season for an auction house, but it’s a thorny path to navigate for both the executors and trustees and the house.
“It is commonly perceived that the highest number wins, whether it be the highest guarantee or the highest share deal, but I think that that’s sort of an oversimplification,” Mari-Claudia Jiménez, former chairman and president of Sotheby’s Americas division and head of global business development told ARTnews. Jiménez, who was also once the house’s chief behind-the-scenes estate dealmaker, said that often an estate has a predisposition for a particular house, but that there is also a fiduciary duty to consider, which means a lot of analysis of the actual specifics of a deal.
“Sometimes the highest number on paper isn’t actually the highest number when you look at the contractual terms that go along with it,” she said. “It’s not necessarily apples and apples sometimes when you’re looking at a Christie’s and a Sotheby’s deal.”
(Jiménez, whose departure from Sotheby’s was first reported in January by Puck, has not been involved in any negotiations about the Riggio estate.)
It’s unclear whether the negotiations will be settled in time for the May evening sales, which have historically been the art market’s first major bellwether of the year. Those sales figure to be particularly important this year. After a rocky market last year, many have hoped that the resolution of the US presidential election might return some stability and verve to both the art market, and the wider economy. However, President Donald Trump’s recent buckshot spray of tariffs across the globe has had some market experts warning that they could be a possible “kiss of death” for any real recovery.
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