It’s Art Week in New York, and while this week is all about the exhibitions, next week all eyes will be on the auctions. A certain type of art history major will no doubt be visiting Christie’s this weekend, eager for their last chance to see highlights from the collection of Marian Goodman, one of the field’s greatest dealers, who passed away earlier this year. We sat down with Johanna Flaum, Christie’s Vice Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, to hear more about this important group of works and how they will be sold.
Congratulations on the arrival of this banner shipment! Break the ground It is being staged across three sales: an evening sale on May 20, a daily sale on May 21, and a 53-lot online auction that runs from May 8 to 22, with the entire collection estimated at approximately $65 million. How is the three-tier structure defined, and who decides what goes where?
We’re really excited about this collection. Marian Goodman has played a crucial role in shaping today’s contemporary art scene, so we felt it was important to present her collection in a way that felt authentic and personal to her life and legacy. We decided to take a multi-pronged approach to the sales process. First, we focused on Richter. Gerhard Richter and Marian Goodman had a decades-long partnership, and his works were the core of her collection and home for nearly half a century. More than any other artist, Richter’s artworks were the pieces that Ms. Goodman chose to live with. We felt it was important to recognize this with a highlight moment at our 21st Century Evening Sales on May 20.
The second element we took into consideration was the composition of the Contemporary and Post-War Art Day auction on May 21. Through this platform, we wanted to provide a broader overview of what Ms. Goodman chooses to surround herself with, and a more nuanced sense of the artists she has collected over time. One great example from the Day Sale is a painting by Franz Kline. In the early 1960s, Ms. Goodman organized a fundraising exhibition for her children’s school, which was actually her first foray into selling art. She asked Franz Kline, who was a friend of her father, to donate a work of art for the auction. To mark the occasion, Klein presented her with this work, which she kept and cherished for the rest of her life.
The third and final piece we wanted to present was the story of Marian Goodman’s early years in the art world as co-founder of Multiples, Inc. This was a company founded in 1965 with the goal of making art accessible, and democratizing the distribution of blue-chip names through printing in editions. Our online sales are a tribute to this, with a fantastic range of prints and editions at very reasonable prices.
Richter’s Eight, spanning from 1982 to 2009, will open the evening sale, with Kerzy (1982) carries an estimate of $35 to $50 million. These wax paintings are rare. Christie’s specialists put the total at 27 pieces, some of which are destroyed and many of which are in museums. What does it take to organize a Kerzy Selling in 2026, given how rare the trade is?
Created during the short period of 1982-1983, the paintings in Richter’s Candles series are extremely rare and certainly his most sought after. It has been 15 years since the candle painting was put up for auction. The quality and rarity of the series, combined with the outstanding provenance, is what constitutes the example we are selling separately; It’s really unique. Kerzy Ms. Goodman acquired it in the 1980s, a few years after she painted it. It represents her foresight and understanding of Richter, a testament to her faith in his practice and the premonition of the broad global resonance that his artworks would eventually achieve. In the years and decades following this acquisition, Marian Goodman’s influence as a gallerist grew exponentially, and Richter became an icon of the contemporary era. He is now considered the greatest living artist of our time. We are very happy to present such a wonderful masterpiece.
The collection includes a stunning array of works by artists whom Goodman never represented. Warhol’s flowers, the Lichtenstein Three, Rosenquist, Jasper Johns, Morandi’s still lifes, Venini’s lighting and Angelo Lelli’s. What does her personal collection tell you about her eye that the gallery list doesn’t?
Quite a few of the works I mentioned—Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, Jones—are reissues, and they offer a real glimpse into Marian Goodman’s origin story and the amazing work she did with Multiples, Inc. She, along with her co-founders, managed to democratize art collecting by selling blue-chip names at affordable prices in the 1960s. In 2021, Ms. Goodman revisited this aspect of her personal history with a project at her eponymous gallery in London honoring Multiples, Inc. and its legacy through an exhibition of pioneering editions published between 1966 and 1992, presented together for the first time. The Venini and Angelo Lelii lamps for sale online add another layer to the collection as a whole. Both Italian designs from the 1940s, these lighting pieces are a testament to her great taste in everything she surrounded herself with. This speaks of Marian Goodman as a truly great collector, someone who appreciates originality, aesthetics and exquisite craftsmanship coming from artisans all over the world.
Goodman began representing Richter in 1985, when its U.S. market was still underdeveloped. The strategy was to place the main business with major institutions and hold others back. Given the eight paintings she now displays, was there a logic to her personal collection that differed from what she sold along the way?
The works in Marian Goodman’s personal collection show Richter’s development as an artist and the history of their collaboration over four decades. As I mentioned, the dates of the works range from 1982 to 2009, and the examples included in the auction are actually a visual timeline of the showings the two made together. Marian Goodman had the instinct and foresight to source a truly remarkable example from every exhibition they collaborated on, and this collection is the result—a beautiful sketch of the pivotal periods of the most important artist of our time along with the definitive professional relationship that led him.
Barbara Gladstone’s estate came on the market at Sotheby’s recent auction housey, and now the Goodman lands at Christie’s. Do the performance of agent properties of this generation differ from the performance of other single-owner properties?
Each of these sales is a remarkable collection that has come to market that tells a larger story than the art market. It represents a generational shift, as the current generation is experiencing a transfer of wealth unlike those that occurred in past eras. We are seeing new types of estates, with different collecting interests, including contemporary estates. Historically, older generations have collected art of their era, and now, between Marian Goodman, Hank MacNeil, and Aggie Gund, we are seeing the estates of great collectors coming to the market that focus on the post-war period and contemporary realm.
The online sale runs alongside exhibition editions. Multiples, Inc. Materials From the 1960s and 1970s, including books by artists Beuys, Oldenburg, LeWitt, Man Ray, and Ed Ruscha. This is a publishing venture that Goodman began in 1965, before the gallery existed. Can you talk about the market for these materials? Does Multiples, Inc. A special place in the hearts of collectors?
Versioning inherently makes collecting more accessible to more people, which is a fundamental core principle of Multiples, Inc. And something Marian Goodman has believed in throughout her career. Multiples, Inc. was not Never a print publisher in the traditional sense; It served as a defining platform for the time, allowing artists to experiment with what an “edition” could be. Instead of conceiving artworks as individual objects, artists conceived the structure of creation in prints and, for this reason, began to experiment with new materials and manufacturing techniques. Certainly, the works published by Multiples, Inc. It holds a special place among collectors; It has scholarly weight and institutional credibility that very few edition publishers can match. The market for these materials remains consistently strong, attracting experienced buyers and sellers and those looking for entry points into collecting. Our online sales include 53 exemplary prints, sculptures, design objects and conceptual artworks that reflect the spirit of Multiples, Inc. It captures the spirit of Marian Goodman’s unique collecting sensibility.
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