Sotheby’s is opening its New York May auction week with $422 million in combined pre-sale estimates across two evening sales — the most concentrated sequence of major-lot activity the house has staged at York Avenue since 2022 — with public previews beginning May 2 and running through May 18.
The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction on May 14 leads with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) from 1983, carrying an estimate in excess of $45 million. The seven-foot canvas is appearing at auction for the first time in more than a decade. It last sold in 2013 for $14.5 million, making this appearance a more-than-three-times-basis return to market. The painting belongs to a suite of 12 monumental canvases Basquiat produced during a breakthrough year largely spent in Los Angeles. Its title stages a direct confrontation between institutional gatekeeping and commercial art value — “Museum Security” and “Priceless Art” inscribed across the canvas — positioning Basquiat within and against the canon simultaneously. The work appeared most recently on the cover of the exhibition catalogue for Signs: Connecting Past and Future at Zaha Hadid’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul in 2025–26.
The Now & Contemporary Evening carries total pre-sale estimates of $202.2 million to $268.8 million excluding premium. Alongside the Basquiat, the sale includes works by Mark Rothko, Lucio Fontana, and Alexander Calder from the Collection of Jean Terry de Gunzburg, which anchors both May evenings.
The Modern Evening Auction on May 19 carries $219.8 million to $298.9 million in estimates, with Pablo Picasso’s Arlequin (Buste) from 1909 as the ceiling lot at approximately $40 million. Vincent van Gogh’s La Moisson en Provence (1888) is estimated at $25 million to $35 million. The Modern Evening extends the de Gunzburg collection’s thread through Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Dada and Surrealism, German Expressionism and Bauhaus, and into early Abstract Expressionism — a throughline tracing the arc of Western modernism across a single estate’s holdings.
Combined, the two evenings put Sotheby’s on course to handle over $420 million in a single New York auction week. Christie’s adds the third leg on May 20 with its 21st Century Evening Sale anchored by the Marian Goodman estate’s seven Gerhard Richter paintings — the Kerze (Candle) from 1982 alone carrying a $35 to $50 million estimate. The three-evening stack across May 14, 19, and 20 approaches a half-billion dollars before buyer’s premium.
For the art market, May in New York remains the season’s most precise credibility test. The 2025 U.S. auction market rebounded 23 percent to $3.17 billion in total sales. Sotheby’s London cleared $175 million white-glove in its March Modern & Contemporary Evening Sale — 54 of 54 lots sold. The Hong Kong watch series in April closed at HK$338 million ($43 million), including a world auction record for a Patek Reference 2499 at HK$60.3 million. The spring’s international run-up has been uniformly positive; New York is now the proving ground.
The Basquiat is the pressure point. At $45 million, Museum Security would rank among the artist’s most significant secondary market results — a benchmark comparable to the major Picassos and Warhols that have defined modern-era auction highs. The de Gunzburg collection spanning both evenings adds a single-owner discipline to the week that tends to generate premium results: provenance clarity and coherent collecting logic command above-estimate outcomes when underlying quality is demonstrable.
Sotheby’s York Avenue exhibitions open to the public May 2, free of charge, with reservations required for entry through May 18.
Related coverage:
Christie’s Books Marian Goodman’s $65 Million Estate for May 20 Evening Sale — Seven Richters Lead, Anchored by a $35–50 Million Candle
Sotheby’s Hong Kong Watch Series Tops HK$338 Million — A New Asia Record and a Patek Reference 2499 World Mark
