THE AUTUMN AUCTIONS

The Autumn Auctions are the evening and day sales of Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips in New York in November: about ten days in the second and third weeks of the month, when single-owner collections and the great Modern and Contemporary evening sales are sold at Rockefeller Center, on Madison Avenue and on Park Avenue, with the day sales following in the mornings and the pictures on view in the houses for a week or more beforehand. Twice a year the market comes to New York for its great sales, and this is the second.

On 15 November 2017 Christie’s sold Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi in New York for $450.3 million, “the highest price ever paid for a painting”.

Books, Then Pictures

Sotheby’s is the oldest of the three. Samuel Baker, a bookseller, held its first sale in London on 11 March 1744, and as Leigh and Sotheby it became a house for books. It did not seek to sell fine art at first, and its first great success with a picture came only in 1913, with a Frans Hals at nine thousand guineas.

James Christie’s house dates its first sale to 5 December 1766, though he is known to have rented rooms from 1762, and advertisements for his sales have been traced to 1759. Harry Phillips, who had been Christie’s clerk, set up on his own in London in 1796.

New York came later. Sotheby’s bought Parke-Bernet, then the largest fine-art auctioneer in the country, in 1964, and moved to York Avenue in 1980. Christie’s held its first American sale in 1977, in the ballroom of the Delmonico’s Hotel on Park Avenue, and in 1997 took a thirty-year lease at Rockefeller Center. In 2023 Sotheby’s bought Marcel Breuer’s building of 1966 at 945 Madison Avenue, once the Whitney’s and afterward the Met’s and the Frick’s; restored by Herzog & de Meuron, it opened as Sotheby’s on 8 November 2025. Phillips keeps its New York rooms at 432 Park Avenue.

November is when the records fall. In 1988 Sotheby’s sold Jasper Johns’s False Start for $17.05 million, then the most paid at auction for the work of a living artist. Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud made $142.4 million at Christie’s in November 2013, and Modigliani’s Nu couché $170.4 million there two years later. In November 2022 the collection of Paul Allen made more than $1.5 billion, the largest sale in the history of art at auction.

The Evening Sales

The weeks are built around the evening sales: the single-owner collections first, then the Modern and the Contemporary, thirty to sixty lots each, most of them guaranteed before the night. The day sales come the next morning. Before any of it, each house hangs its sales in its own galleries, and the exhibitions are open to the public.

A great lot can take many minutes. In November 2025 Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, from the collection of Leonard A. Lauder, opened at $130 million at Sotheby’s and sold after twenty minutes for $236.4 million, the highest price for a work of modern art at auction. “Tonight, we made history at the Breuer,” said Helena Newman. Sotheby’s sales that November came to $1.17 billion, and Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) made $55 million, a record for a woman artist.

In 2026 Sotheby’s opens its exhibitions on 7 November at 945 Madison Avenue for The New York Sales: Modern evening and day sales, the Now and Contemporary evening sale, and the Contemporary day sale. Phillips holds its Modern and Contemporary evening sale on 18 November at five o’clock, with Calder’s Snow Flurry, May 14 estimated at $4 to 6 million and Pollock’s Constellation at $3.5 to 5 million, and its day sale on 20 November. Christie’s has not yet published its dates.

What to Know

The evening sales run through the second and third weeks of November, and the exhibitions open about a week before. The 2027 dates have not been announced.

The exhibitions are open to the public; Phillips’s runs from 7 to 18 November 2026, Monday to Saturday, from ten to five. The houses publish nothing about seats at the evening sales. To bid, register well before the sale: approval is not instant, and may need a bank reference or a deposit.

A lounge suit. None of the houses publishes a code; the evening sales are a matter of business, and dressed as such.

Christie’s is at 20 Rockefeller Center, Sotheby’s at 945 Madison Avenue, Phillips at 432 Park Avenue.

The mistake is to set a limit at the hammer price. “The hammer is not the price”: the buyer’s premium at the major houses runs from about twenty to twenty-seven per cent, and sales tax is charged on the premium too.

The Court

The Autumn Auctions are not the Court’s own. Seats at the evening sales, and a specialist’s time at the views, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay for those who come from out of town, and the table afterward. The Court is at Art Basel Miami Beach in the first days of December.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.