Inside the November Marquee Auctions: What the Market’s Biggest Week Really Revealed

New York’s November marquee auctions have long served as the art market’s final stress test of the year—a last, high-stakes read on global demand, collector confidence and the direction of the U.S. market heading into 2026. But this season carried a different kind of weight. After nearly a full year of the Trump administration and persistent uncertainty surrounding the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate path, the fall sales arrived amid a charged macroeconomic landscape. Even so, more than $1.6 billion in blue-chip art was poised to hit the block, including some of the most consequential American collections to surface in decades.

The week opened with an unmistakable signal. Christie’s launched its marquee stretch with the single-owner sale of the Robert F. Weis and Patricia G. Ross Weis collection, pulling in $218 million (well above expectations) before adding another $471 million in its 20th Century Evening Sale. The star was Mark Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe), which soared to $62.1 million after a competitive, nearly five-minute bidding battle that also produced the highest online bid ever placed during a live Christie’s auction. By the end of its first night, Christie’s had already matched its total performance from the same week last year.

Sotheby’s answered with a thunderclap of its own: the $527.5 million sale of Leonard A. Lauder’s twentieth-century collection, led by Gustav Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer, a $236.4 million result that not only set a new auction record for the artist but also became the most valuable work ever sold in Sotheby’s Modern category. With the addition of the Now and Contemporary sale, Sotheby’s closed the evening at a towering $706 million, marking the highest single-night total in its history.

Together, the houses delivered some of the strongest results of the past decade. Yet the picture they created was not one of a uniformly buoyant market. It was one of selectivity, precision and deep competition only for material of genuine rarity, quality and provenance.

To unpack the tone beneath the headlines and what this season reveals about collector psychology, provenance, global demand as well as the shifting balance between primary and secondary markets, veteran art advisor Megan Fox Kelly breaks down what the numbers actually mean.

This season delivered some of the strongest totals in years, with Sotheby’s hitting a record single-evening result. How would you characterize the overall market tone coming out of these November sales? 

I would describe the tone as confident but selective. The strength we saw wasn’t a sudden “rebound”—it was the market responding to truly exceptional material. If there’s one signal that matters, it’s that demand for great works never disappeared. The narrative of a weakening market over the past six months came from a lack of supply, not a lack of buyers. When collections of this caliber appear—works with impeccable provenance and real art-historical weight—the bidding tells a very different story than the headlines.

We also have to acknowledge something else: these results were driven by estates and long-held collections, not by collectors choosing to sell because the timing felt perfect. Had the Lauder or Ross Weis material surfaced in May, we’d be having a very different conversation about the spring season—and far fewer “market in decline” stories.

Single-owner collections drove a significant share of results this season. What does the performance of the Lauder and Ross Weis collections tell us about current collector confidence and the role of provenance in 2025?

The performance of these collections reinforces something we’ve known but often forget in the noise of the market cycle: provenance is a form of value. Collectors will stretch for works that come from thoughtful, well-built collections where the quality is consistent and the story is compelling. The Lauder sale in particular demonstrated that provenance can create its own gravitational field—buyers trust it, institutions trust it, and the bidding reflected that.

It also tells us that confidence is still highest in artists with deep scholarship behind them. When a collection presents the very best examples by historically important artists, buyers step forward regardless of the market mood.

How sustainable do you believe this level of bidding depth is, especially given the 20-minute, six-bidder competition on the Klimt? Does it reflect renewed global participation or a small pool of ultra-wealthy buyers?

It’s both concentrated and competitive. There are more collectors at the top tier of global wealth today than ever, and several were clearly active this week. That creates depth at the very top, but it’s not broad-based. We’re talking about a handful of individuals who can pursue a $200 million Klimt with conviction.

But what matters is that the competition wasn’t passive. It wasn’t a single bidder pushing the price. You had sustained, aggressive participation from multiple geographies. That tells me that for truly irreplaceable works, the buyer pool is deep enough to sustain this level of competition when the material merits it.

The fall season followed a packed circuit of art fairs, from Frieze London to Art Basel Paris. Did the auctions confirm or contradict what you observed in the primary market this autumn?

They confirmed it. In the primary market this fall—we’ve been seeing a slower more disciplined environment. Galleries were reporting good placement for artists with depth and institutional support, but little appetite for the speculative energy we saw a few years ago. Collectors are being thoughtful about what they acquire and why.

The auctions confirmed that shift. The strongest results concentrated around artists with established markets and works that were fresh to the market. By contrast, the highly speculative contemporary segment still feels fragile. So the pattern was consistent across both sides of the market: steady demand, but only for the artists whose work has real critical footing and long-term resonance. The days of impulsive primary-market buying followed by immediate flipping at auction are very clearly over—and I see that as a healthy correction.

Basquiat, Cattelan, Rothko, Hockney, Monet—major names all performed well. Do you see this as a reset of pricing power for established postwar and contemporary masters, or is it an exceptional season driven by rare material?

It’s mostly the material. These were exceptional examples—works that don’t come up often, and in some cases haven’t been on the market for decades. When you combine rarity with strong provenance, the prices reflect that.

But I also think we’re seeing a re-centering of the market. Collectors are gravitating toward artists with real historical footing right now. We’re in a moment where quality matters more than trend, and that’s healthy. I wouldn’t call it a universal “reset,” but it is a reaffirmation of value for established masters.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s both outperformed presale estimates. Do you interpret this as a strategic success in estimate-setting, or actual demand exceeding expectations?

A bit of both. The houses—and their consignors—were very disciplined this season—for the most part, estimates were realistic, well-calibrated, and positioned to encourage competition. That’s good strategy.

But demand genuinely exceeded expectations for certain works. You don’t see 10-15 minute bidding sequences unless multiple people believe deeply in the quality and value of what they are pursuing. For those works, the estimates were sound, but the buyers pushed them past the high end.

Did anything in the sale week surprise you—either in terms of bidding behavior, regional participation or the performance of specific categories?

What surprised me most was how quickly the narrative changed once great material was on the block. The press has been describing a declining market for months now, yet the minute these collections appeared, you saw decisive bidding.

I was also struck by how international the competition was at the top end. The participation came from all over—American, European, Asian buyers—which tells us the global demand for masterpieces has not diminished but most likely expanded.

And finally, the contrast within contemporary art was telling. A conceptual icon like Cattelan’s America barely registered, while Basquiat soared. That gap isn’t random—it reflects how much the market has shifted toward works with depth, authenticity, and cultural significance.