Sotheby's will auction the collection of Emily Fisher Landau, a prominent Whitney Museum board member and avid art collector who died in March at age 102. The sale, comprising about 120 works from her estate, is led by Pablo Picasso's "Femme à la montre" (1932), estimated at over $120 million, alongside major pieces by Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, and Glenn Ligon. Fisher Landau amassed roughly 1,200 works over decades, displayed at her private Fisher Landau Center for Art from 1991 to 2017, and donated 417 works to the Whitney in 2010 alone.
This sale matters because it represents one of the most anticipated single-collector auctions of the fall season, with the Picasso alone potentially setting a record. Fisher Landau's collection reflects a discerning eye for 20th-century American and European masters, and the auction will test the high end of the art market amid broader economic uncertainty. The proceeds and the dispersal of her holdings also underscore the legacy of a collector who shaped institutional collections at the Whitney, MoMA, and other museums through her donations and board service.