Sotheby’s will offer the collection of cable television magnate Ted Baum and his wife, interior designer Ruth Baum, with the whole estimated to total in excess of $100 million. The collection includes works by leading American artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Mitchell, Ed Ruscha, Mark Rothko, and Tom Wesselmann, and major European figures including Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, and Piero Manzoni. The group is led by a $10–15 million Rothko painting on paper and a Ruscha painting bearing the same estimate. Other top works are a Burri, a Fontana, and a Warhol, all tagged at $4–6 million. The remainder have not yet been assigned estimates.
Two dozen works will come to the block at a dedicated evening auction on November 16, with others following during a day sale on November 17 and yet more offered at various sales throughout next year; the collection consists of more than 130 works in total. Highlights will go on public display at Sotheby’s showrooms in London, Hong Kong, Paris, Los Angeles, and New York.
“From Joan Mitchell to David Hammons, the Baums knew what they liked, were insatiably curious, and kept pushing their eye,” said the couple’s advisor, New York’s Wendy Cromwell, in press materials. “The result of their shared passion is a collection that gallops through time, countries and genres. The Baums’ collection tells the story of what it means to collect contemporary art.”
The Baums had homes in New York; New Jersey; Southampton, New York; and Palm Beach, Florida, and were active in philanthropy in the areas where they lived. Ted Baum died in 2021; Ruth Baum followed this year. A gallery at the Norton Museum of Art, in West Palm Beach, is named for the collectors, who also funded the institution’s first contemporary art curator position; they also donated works by artists like Dale Chihuly and Leo Villareal, and Ruth was elected a life trustee in 2020. They served on boards and committees at New York’s Guggenheim Museum and Parrish Art Museum. Over the last two decades, Ruth supported organizations such as the Palm Beach Zoo and Conservation Society and the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach; Palm Beach Dramaworks; and Planned Parenthood of Florida and New Jersey.
Mark Rothko, Untitled (1967).
Sotheby’s
Their collecting began with a sketch by American artist John Sloan that Ruth bought at a charity auction in the 1970s, and they went on to snap up modern drawings and watercolors on paper by artists such as Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso. They hoped that their collecting would peak with “one great painting,” and they felt they found it in 1983, when they bought Rothko’s untitled 1967 red-and-orange painting on paper, their first of many purchases of contemporary art.
“The Rothko hit us,” said Ruth, quoted in press materials. “That was it. We were children of the ’60s, and the art of that period spoke to us.”
In the 1990s, they went on to collect artists like Joan Mitchell along with Sam Francis, Hans Hofmann, Lichtenstein, and Wesselmann. In the 2000s they would add Ruscha’s Dimple (1964), in which a C-clamp seems to wrinkle the “e” at the end of the word, engaging Ted’s love of wordplay, and Warhol’s 1984 work The Scream (After Edvard Munch). They acquired the latter in 2006 at Sotheby’s London for £1.5 million ($2.7 million, or about $4.5 million adjusted for inflation).
Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1960).
Sotheby’s
“Ted and Ruth were among the most committed collectors of their generation,” said Oliver Barker, the house’s chairman for Europe, in press materials. “I was immediately struck by their inquisitiveness and the deep level of their research. No doubt they came to European abstraction via the touch points of post-war American abstraction. They instinctively understood that artists like Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein were vital to the history of 20th-century abstraction and could sit perfectly well situated in their beautiful interiors alongside Rothko, Mitchell and others.” The couple picked up their Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1960), at Sotheby’s London in 2000 for just £333,500 ($485,232, or $934,155 adjusted for inflation).
The Baum collection announcement comes as the auction houses are working to ramp up excitement for their November art sales. On Monday, Sotheby’s main competitor, Christie’s, announced that a “distinguished collector” would offer $100 million in Old Masters and contemporary art, led by a Picasso estimated at $40 million; that collector is reportedly famed artist Jeff Koons. Days before, Sotheby’s revealed that it would offer 12 works from the holdings of Argentinian collecting couple Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier, expected to total a whopping $450 million and led by a $180 million Vincent van Gogh.
