Sotheby's to Sell $100 M. Ted and Ruth Baum Collection, Led by Rothko and Ruscha

Sotheby's will offer the Ted and Ruth Baum collection at auction in November with a total estimate exceeding $100 million, led by a Mark Rothko painting on paper and an Ed Ruscha painting, each carrying a $10–15 million estimate.

The two dozen top works come to the block at a dedicated evening sale on November 16, with a day sale on November 17 carrying additional pieces. More than 130 works in total will disperse across Sotheby's sales throughout the coming year.

A 1967 Rothko on paper — the Baums' first contemporary purchase in 1983 — anchors the group alongside a Ruscha, with other marquee lots including an Alberto Burri, a Lucio Fontana, and an Andy Warhol, each tagged at $4–6 million. The wider collection adds Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Mitchell, Tom Wesselmann, Yves Klein, and Piero Manzoni.

Highlights travel to Sotheby's showrooms in London, Hong Kong, Paris, Los Angeles, and New York ahead of the sales.

"From Joan Mitchell to David Hammons, the Baums knew what they liked, were insatiably curious, and kept pushing their eye," the couple's New York advisor Wendy Cromwell said in press materials. "The result of their shared passion is a collection that gallops through time, countries and genres."

The Baums built homes in New York, New Jersey, Southampton, and Palm Beach. Ted Baum, a cable television executive, died in 2021; Ruth Baum, an interior designer, died this year. The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach bears their name on a gallery and credits the couple with funding its first contemporary art curator post; Ruth became a life trustee in 2020.

They served on boards at the Guggenheim and the Parrish Art Museum. Ruth supported the Palm Beach Zoo and Conservation Society, the Armory Art Center, Palm Beach Dramaworks, and Planned Parenthood of Florida and New Jersey.

The Baums' collecting life began in the 1970s, when Ruth bought a John Sloan sketch at a charity auction. They hoped to peak with "one great painting" and believed they had found it in 1983, when they acquired Rothko's untitled red-and-orange painting on paper.

"The Rothko hit us," Ruth Baum recalled in press materials. "That was it. We were children of the '60s, and the art of that period spoke to us."

The 1990s brought Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis, Hans Hofmann, Lichtenstein, and Wesselmann into the collection. In the 2000s the couple added Ruscha's Dimple (1964) — in which a C-clamp seems to wrinkle the "e" of the word — and Warhol's The Scream (After Edvard Munch) (1984). They bought the latter at Sotheby's London in 2006 for £1.5 million ($2.7 million then, roughly $4.5 million inflation-adjusted).

Sotheby's chairman for Europe Oliver Barker pointed to the European works as a defining thread, citing the Baums' commitment to the histories that link post-war American and European abstraction.

The Baums bought their Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1960), at Sotheby's London in 2000 for £333,500 ($485,232 then, about $934,155 today).

What does the Baum sale change for November's auction calendar?

The announcement lands in a packed November. Christie's said earlier that week that a "distinguished collector" would offer $100 million in Old Masters and contemporary art, led by a Picasso estimated at $40 million; press reports identified that collector as Jeff Koons. Days before, Sotheby's announced 12 works from the Argentinian couple Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier, totaling roughly $450 million and led by a $180 million Vincent van Gogh.

Three nine-figure estates funneling into November show how aggressively both major houses are consolidating their headline consignments into the same fortnight of sales.