An auction at Sotheby’s raises $676m

WHEN SOTHEBY’S raised the gavel on the season’s biggest art auction on November 15th the sellers, Harry and Linda Macklowe, did not arrive as one to watch the proceedings from the discreet skybox above the auction floor, as those disposing of a collection often do. The couple can hardly stand to be in the same room together. Their divorce, after nearly six decades of marriage, was so contentious that in 2018 a judge ordered them to sell 65 of their magnificent 20th-century artworks and split the proceeds.