In recent years, single-owner collections have been bright spots in the unpredictable art market.

Sotheby's achieved US$922 million with the Macklowe Collection in 2021, and rival Christie's shattered all records in 2022 with the US$1.62 billion sale of Paul Allen’s museum-quality art collection – the highest total ever for a single-owner auction, with 18 new records set for artists including Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Klimt. Even 2024's priciest lot – Magritte's The Empire of Light, which sold for a record US$121 million – came from Christie's single-owner sale of Mica Ertegun's collection.

Now, in 2025, Christie’s has announced another highly anticipated single-owner sale: the Riggio Collection, set to headline its May New York auctions. Amassed by the late Barnes & Noble founder, Leonard Riggio, and his wife Louise over three decades, the collection is expected to fetch US$250 million, with masterworks by Mondrian, Magritte, Picasso, Giacometti, and Warhol among 30 pieces.  

The late Barnes & Noble founder, Leonard Riggio, and his wife Louise

Leonard Riggio, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 83, was a visionary entrepreneur who revolutionized the American book industry from modest beginnings. Raised in Brooklyn, Riggio was a liberal thinker and art enthusiast. While attending night classes at New York University, he worked as a stock boy in the campus bookstore, and it didn’t take long for him to notice a problem: students were being turned away when books ran out. Frustrated, he dropped out in 1965 and opened his own shop, the Student Book Exchange (SBX), just a few blocks from campus.

At just 30, Riggio made a bold bet, taking out a US$1.2 million loan to buy Barnes & Noble, then a sleepy, half-century-old bookstore with a single location on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Over the next few decades, he transformed it into the largest bookseller in the United States. Through a string of acquisitions, he opened hundreds of superstores, many in suburban malls and areas that had never had local bookstores before.

“Our bookstores were designed to be welcoming as opposed to intimidating,” Riggio once said. “These weren’t elitist places. You could go in, get a cup of coffee, sit down and read a book for as long as you like, use the restroom. These were innovations that we had that no one thought was possible.”

What he did was turn a bookstore into a cultural hub. Barnes & Noble locations became places where book lovers could stay and browse, offering thousands of titles alongside music, toys, games, gifts, coffee bars, and even public bathrooms – all in a café-style atmosphere with comfortable chairs that encouraged lingering for hours. By 2008, Barnes & Noble controlled nearly 20% of the U.S. consumer book market, with over 700 stores spread across all 50 states.

Barnes & Noble was the largest bookseller in the United States

It was in the 1990s that the self-made bookselling mogul began collecting art with his wife Louise in earnest. A turning point came when Riggio encountered Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses at Dia Chelsea. 

The monumental sculpture left a lasting impression, sparking his passion for large-scale art and inspiring his deep patronage of the Dia Art Foundation. That commitment eventually led to the creation of Dia:Beacon, the renowned contemporary art museum he helped bring to life in 2003. The couple would eventually acquire Serra’s Sidewinder for their Bridgehampton home – a piece so massive it can even be spotted on Google Earth.

Known as a true collector, Riggio was often seen at major auctions, paddle in hand, bidding on multimillion-dollar works. While he gravitated toward postwar and contemporary art – minimalist, conceptual, and Arte Povera pieces in particular – Lousie leaned toward more historical works. Together, over three decades, they blended their tastes to build one of the world's most significant collections of 20th-century art. 

“This is tough for me to say goodbye to old friends,” Louise told the New York Times. “But I will not put them in storage. They need to be seen.” 

Richard Serra's Sidewinder in the couple's Bridgehampton home

The sculpture is visible on Google Earth

Their collection, featuring over 30 masterpieces by the likes of Piet Mondrian, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, and Andy Warhol, is expected to achieve a combined total of US$250 million.

Both Christie's and Sotheby's are known to have pursued the consignment, with Sotheby's enlisting Pace Gallery as a partner to bolster their position through financial guarantees – a strategy reminiscent of how mega-galleries Acquavella, Gagosian, and Pace successfully secured prominent Wall Street financier Donald Marron's collection in 2020 for private sale.

Neither Sotheby’s nor Pace has commented publicly, but Christie’s ultimately secured the consignment. Louise Riggio cited the auction house’s long-standing relationship with the family and its favorable financial terms as key factors in her decision. While the financial details of the Riggio deal remain undisclosed, industry insiders speculate that Christie’s likely offered a particularly attractive package to anchor its May sales.

Piet Mondrian | Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue (1922) | 54 x 53.3 cm | To be offered at Christie's New York in May

Piet Mondrian | Composition No. II (1930) | 51 x 51cm | Sold: US$51,000,000, Sotheby's New York, 2022 (Auction record for the artist)

Presented as a dedicated single-owner auction within Christie’s 20th and 21st Century Art sales this May, the pieces reveal a more intimate side of the Riggio collection – the art they surrounded themselves with every day.
 
Among the works expected to draw significant attention is Piet Mondrian's Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue (1922). This geometric abstraction shares similarities with Composition II, which set a US$51 million auction record for the artist at Sotheby's in 2022. While its estimate has not yet been disclosed, it is widely expected to challenge that benchmark.

Another highlight is René Magritte L’empire des lumières (Empire of Light), the very first of 17 oil paintings in this iconic series. Painted in 1949, this version, measuring 48.5 x 58.8 cm, was originally sold to Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1950 and later acquired by Riggio at Christie’s New York in 2023 for US$34.9 million. The work is expected to draw significant interest, particularly following the record-breaking US$121 million sale of another version from the Mica Ertegun collection last year.

René Magritte | L’empire des lumières (1954) | 146 x 114 cm | Sold: US$121,160,000, Christie's New York, 2024 (Auction record for the artist and for a Surrealist work of art)

René Magritte | L’empire des lumières (1949) | 48.5 x 58.8 cm | To be offered at Christie's New York in May

Three paintings that once adorned the couple's Manhattan residence

Other featured works include three paintings that once adorned the couple's Manhattan residence: Balthus’ Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le chandelier) (1944-45), Magritte’s Les droits de l’homme (1947-48), and Andy Warhol’s The Last Supper (1986). 

Also included in the auction are Pablo Picasso’s Femme à la coiffe d'Arlésienne sur fond vert (Lee Miller) (1937), a striking portrait of legendary American photographer Lee Miller, and Alberto Giacometti's Femme de Venise I (1956). 

Before heading to the auction block in New York, these works will embark on a global tour, beginning in London and Hong Kong this March, followed by stops in Paris and Dubai in April. 

Pablo Picasso | Femme à la coiffe d'Arlésienne sur fond vert (Lee Miller) (1937) | 81 x 65.1 cm | To be offered at Christie's New York in May

Alberto Giacometti | Femme de Venise I (1956) | Height: 105.1 cm | To be offered at Christie's New York in May