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Christie’s $700 Million Night

With brisk bidding and an uplifting sense that people were buying art for art’s sake, Christie’s first auctions of New York’s fall season revealed a market returning to solid ground. With six well-known collections on offer, the single night yielded some $690 million in sales, even if the action in the eight-figure range was less heated.

Christie's art auction
The action was more subdued at the highest tier, where much was sold at or near the estimates. The top lot was a red-and-yellow Mark Rothko painting, No. 31, that was estimated at $50 million and hammered at $53.5 million. Photo: Courtesy of Christie's
Marion Maneker
November 18, 2025

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It took a bit longer than expected, but the art market’s turn toward historical work has finally arrived: Last night at Christie’s, nearly $700 million in art made before the 21st century was sold in a single night. We haven’t seen numbers like that in quite some time—it’s true that the Paul Allen estate sale of 2022 did twice that sum in a single evening, but there are only so many mega-collectors on that scale to go around. Yesterday’s auction of the Robert and Patricia Weis collection, which made $218 million, and the 20th century evening sale, which made another $471 million, felt like the kinds of sales that took place well before the pandemic.