Christie’s 21st-century evening auction in New York on May 20 brought in $162.7 million, a 69 percent increase from the same sale last year and the house’s highest New York evening total in the category since 2021. The sale featured 42 lots, including a single-owner collection of Minimalist works owned by Henry S. McNeil Jr. and eight Gerhard Richter works from the collection of the late gallerist Marian Goodman. The top lot was Richter’s photorealistic painting *Kerze (Candle)* (1982), which sold for $35.1 million, falling short of its $50 million high estimate. Other notable results included a Donald Judd Plexiglas stack that sold for $12.8 million and works by Richard Artschwager and Carl Andre that far exceeded their low estimates.
The sale matters because it signals continued strength in the high-end contemporary art market, with Christie’s achieving a 95 percent sell-through rate and total sales well above last year’s equivalent auction. The strong performance of the Marian Goodman collection—six of eight Richter lots exceeded their high estimates—underscores the enduring value of blue-chip artists and the influence of top gallerists on market dynamics. The results also highlight the market’s selective appetite, with many lots selling within or below estimate, and the reliance on guarantees (79.7 percent of the presale low estimate) to secure consignments.