See iconic art from Picasso and others in NYC before it gets sold to private collections

Hundreds of rare artworks from giants of modern and contemporary art, including Picasso, Matisse, Renoir and Gauguin, go on view at Sotheby’s on Friday, completely free and open to the public.

The exhibitions serve as an in-person preview for the auction house’s fall sales and run through about Nov. 20. There are several different shows across the huge exhibition space in the Upper East Side that highlight upcoming auctions from various collectors.

The cornerstone of the fall shows is the private collection of the late Sydell Miller, who passed in March. Miller was a beauty entrepreneur who turned her Palm Beach home into a sort of private museum that rivaled global collections.

Sotheby’s estimates her collection will bring in roughly $200 million, including its most valuable piece – “Nymphéas,” a nearly 6-foot-tall Monet water lilies painting estimated to sell for $60 million.

Other shows offer an embarrassment of riches, from modern art auctions of women surrealists like Leonora Carrington, to more contemporary sales featuring Elaine de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns and Ed Ruscha. Inside the exhibition gallery, a structure was built to showcase a 16-foot-tall stained glass Tiffany window from 1913.

“Unless you just can’t stand art, there is literally something for everyone,” said Julian Dawes, head of impressionist and modern art for Sotheby’s Americas. “Everything from early impressionism up to the most contemporary art.”

Although there's a popular misconception that auction house previews are private, or ticketed, or invite-only, Dawes said, they are in fact free and open to all.

“We put a lot of care into the curation and installation of the exhibitions,” he said. “And the thing that’s most satisfying is sharing that with the public.”

The shows present a fleeting, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see most of these pieces in person, Dawes said. Many were purchased in the 1970s or ‘80s and are only now changing hands for the first time.

“The works are like nuclear submarines,” Dawes said. “They stay down for years and years and only rarely surface, before they go into another collection and potentially disappear onto somebody’s wall somewhere in the world for another generation.”

One such piece is sculptor Alberto Giacometti's bronze bust of his brother Diego, which Harry Guggenheim purchased in the early 1950s. Dawes said it has never been seen since.

Another is Picasso’s portrait of Françoise Gilot, a fellow artist who bore two of his children and later married Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine. The portrait was purchased in 1951 by Morton Neumann, a cosmetics magnate who was one of Picasso’s favorite collectors, according to Dawes.

“It was exhibited once in the ‘80s and it’s been sitting in a townhouse on the Upper West Side basically since then,” he said.

Another standout from the evening modern art sale is Leonora Carrington’s painted wooden sculpture “La Grande Dame” or “Cat Woman,” which, standing nearly 8 feet tall, is one of the exhibitions' showstoppers.

“It’s like a sculpture and a painting and short story all at once,” he said. “It supercharges the imagination when you encounter it in person.”

The sculpture, which made its more recent appearance at the Venice Biennale in 2022, rekindled an interest in Carrington and other female surrealists that has seen their works become priced on par with household names like Salvador Dali and Max Ernst, according to NYU art history professor Pepe Karmel.

“There’s been a new interest in these women surrealists from Latin America and Spain,” Karmel said. “It’s a chapter of art history that was largely ignored in the United States, so it’s great that there will be more of them on view.”

With nearly a thousand artworks on view across several auction previews, Karmel said, along with the city's plethora of art fairs, museums and gallery exhibits, the issue may be that there is almost too much art for New Yorkers to see.

“As I often tell my students, the most important equipment for learning about art is a really comfortable pair of sneakers,” he said.

Preview shows for Sotheby’s fall art auctions open Nov. 8 and run through Nov. 20. All are completely free and open to the public. Details of dates and hours are available here.