All posts tagged: Riggio

Christie’s and Sotheby’s Try to Wrangle the Leonard Riggio Estate

Christie’s and Sotheby’s Try to Wrangle the Leonard Riggio Estate

The secondary market today is driven by two things: quality and prestige. Often those two things are tied together; after all, the most well respected collectors are usually those with the best collections. When such marquee collectors die, it’s inevitable that Christie’s and Sotheby’s try to outmanuever each other for the estates’ business, as seems to be the case right now over the collection of Barnes and Noble co-founder and former ARTnews Top 200 collector Leonard Riggio, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the negotiations. Riggio, who passed away in August 2024, was a profound collector of the Minimalists and a driving force behind the establishment of Dia:Beacon in Upstate New York. It’s almost impossible to avoid mentioning that among the treasures Riggio kept at his Bridgehampton home was Richard Serra’s 300-ton steel sculpture Sidewinder (1999), which was visible from space thanks to Google Earth satellites.  Related Articles Among the more than 20 sculptures that graced the lawn of Riggio’s Hamptons estate were Willem de Kooning’s bronze sculpture Seated Woman (1969–81), Mark di Suvero’s Caramba (1984–90), Black Standing Nana (1993-1994) by Niki de Saint …

Christie’s and Sotheby’s Try to Wrangle the Leonard Riggio Estate

Leonard Riggio, Barnes & Noble Founder and Art Collector, Dies at 83

Leonard Riggio, the businessman behind Barnes & Noble who made significant forays into the art world, buying key works of Minimalist art and giving millions of dollars to the Dia Art Foundation, has died at 83. He had been battling Alzheimer’s disease, according to an announcement by his family. Riggio was in the rare class of collectors who could claim they had both pioneered an entire industry and transformed at least one high-profile museum. His art collecting, though perhaps less widely known to the world writ large than his leadership of the bookselling chain Barnes & Noble, was well-regarded and closely watched—he and his wife Louise had appeared on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list each year since 1999. And were it not for the couple, the Dia Art Foundation, a New York organization that has been credited with building a canon of Minimalist art, would not have been able to undertake a range of projects that have allowed it to expand greatly in the past two decades. Related Articles Dia honored Riggio on Tuesday by …