Battling for the year’s biggest art sale

The Macklowes’ acrimonious divorce means one of America’s greatest collections is up for auction

One of the truisms of divorce is that most of the conflict is not about relatively unimportant matters – like who is to blame for the marriage breaking down or the custody of the children – but who gets to keep the porcelain ducks gifted by Great-Aunt Edna. Still, in among the second hand-junk, sometimes a thing or two of value emerges. In this case, “one of America’s greatest private art collections, including works by Picasso, Warhol and Rothko”, is heading to market to help settle the “acrimonious divorce” of billionaire couple Harry and Linda Macklowe, says Nina Lloyd in the Times.

During their 59 years of marriage the couple (pictured, right, in happier times) amassed a huge collection of art, thanks to property magnate Harry’s fortune and Linda’s “keen eye for curation”, says Lloyd. However, when Linda discovered her husband’s affair with museum director Patricia Landeau she decided to file for divorce. In response, when Harry remarried, he “put up giant his-and-hers photographs with his new spouse on the side of a skyscraper overlooking Central Park in an apparent dig at his former wife”. As you might expect, the negotiations over the couple’s assets weren’t smooth either, with a two-year fight “over how the works should be split and valued”.

Experts divided

The problem was that many of the valuations of the artworks produced by the couple’s “hired experts” were “vastly different”, says Jacqui Palumbo on CNN. Indeed, in the case of one “existential” sculpture, “the valuation varied by $30m”. Sick of the squabbling, the judge overseeing the case eventually ordered “the Macklowes to sell 65 artworks and split the profits”. While the resulting sale doesn’t include the whole of their “eye-popping billion-dollar art collection”, the art that is going under the hammer is still expected by Sotheby’s “to fetch over $600m in total” which is “the highest estimate ever placed on any collection to come to auction”.

Sotheby had better hope that their estimate is correct, says Anna Brady in The Art Newspaper. While the Macklowes’ divorce may have been bitter, there was also a “tug of war” over who was to be put in charge of the auction. In the end, the battle between Sotheby’s and rival Christie’s “came down to one thing – who would give the biggest guarantee”. As a result, Sotheby’s will have to pay out if the final figure is lower. This isn’t an empty threat either, as Sotheby’s found out after the sale of a 500-work collection in 2015 ended up short of the $515m guarantee.

“Sotheby’s has put prices of up to $80m on works by Giacometti and Rothko”

Hunger for masterpieces

The large guarantee is a reflection of the fact that, at the moment, auction houses have suffered from a “scarcity of top-quality inventory”, making a “meaty collection” like that of the Macklowes’ an “especially energizing prize”, says Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times. Still, Sotheby’s is confident that the sale will go well, arguing that “record demand” from across the globe and a “real hunger for great masterpieces”, means that demand, especially in the form of “strong interest in Asia” is “far outstripping supply”. This will help justify prices of up to $80m each in the case of a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti and a painting by

Mark Rothko.