NEW YORK, NY.- Christie's 20th and 21st Century Art Department presents New York Spring Marquee Week. This highly anticipated series of sales showcases more than 750 artworks spanning over two centuries of the art historical canon, with exemplary objects from critical and defining movements of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, many coming from the most important collectors of the era.

Sales begin on Monday, May 18 with back-to-back evening sales: Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse and the 20th Century Evening Sale, which is highlighted by selections from the esteemed personal collections of Agnes Gund, and Lorinda Payson de Roulet, among others. Auctions continue Tuesday, May 19 with the Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sales, followed the next day by two evening sales on Wednesday, May 20: Defined Space: The Collection of Henry S. McNeil, Jr. and Marian's Richters & 21st Century Evening Sale. Live sales conclude Thursday, May 21 with the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale. The week will end with two online sales: Picasso Ceramics and Breaking Ground: The Private Collection of Marian Goodman Part I, both closing Friday, May 22. In total, the nine sales are expected to total in excess of $1 billion. The full exhibition will be on view at Christie's New York headquarters at Rockefeller Center beginning Saturday, May 9 and free and open to the public.

The premier event of the week is Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse, a single-owner collection comprising 16 exceptional works of art that will be presented in chronological order, beginning with the earliest object and ending with the most recent, as a visual unveiling of watershed moments across modern art history. In total, the collection is expected to achieve in the region of $450 million, and is poised to become the second collection ever to surpass the $1 billion mark. The sale is headlined by two singular works: a painting by Jackson Pollock that will be the first and only large-scale drip painting ever to come to auction and an extraordinarily rare sculpture by Constantin Brancusi representative of the birth of Modernism. Both are estimated to sell in the region of $100 million.

Following the Collection of S.I. Newhouse is the 20th Century Evening Sale, a celebration of artistic icons who have defined the landscape of twentieth-century art as it is understood today. The sale is filled with exceptional pieces by leading figures including Edgar Degas, Willem de Kooning, Childe Hassam, Lee Krasner, Roy Lichtenstein, René Magritte, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Alice Neel, Georgia O'Keeffe, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol. This season's highlights are distinguished by exceptional provenance and hail from important private collections such as The Collection of Agnes Gund, Lasting Impression: The Collection of Marilyn Arison, The Joanna Carson Collection, The Rabb Goldberg Collection, and The Collection of Lorinda Payson de Roulet.

The second evening of sales will take place Wednesday, May 20, kicking off with Defined Space: The Collection of Henry S. McNeil, Jr., the finest private collection of Minimalism in existence. Thoughtfully assembled by Hank McNeil for the interior of his Philadelphia home, the collection will present the market with 12 best-in-class examples by the likes of Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre and Sol Lewitt.

The evening of May 20 concludes with Marian's Richters & the 21st Century Evening Sale. The sale will open with eight prized works by Gerhard Richter, celebrating the relationship between the most influential gallerist of our time and the most important living artist. Leading the sale is Kerze, a masterpiece painted by Gerhard Richter in 1982. The 21st Century Evening Sale will immediately follow with an outstanding selection of artworks from iconic names including Cecily Brown, Peter Doig, and Keith Haring, juxtaposing recognized blue-chip artists alongside today's emerging creators, vividly capturing the art of the present moment.