Slow and steady wins the race - seemingly pertinent to an industry that prides itself (or at least so believed) for the kind of connoisseurship that can stand the test of time. Yet, it only tells one side of the story. Anyone in the art market would know that it’s all fun and games until the moment comes for the artwork to change hands, then everyone becomes tactical and pensive. After all, collectors on that level are not really racing for wealth, but for exclusivity, value, and increasingly, integrity.

Single owner collections echo that last sentiment, hitting a high note in 2025 with 150 sales in auctions, and totalling $2.31 billion in sales value. That is a 94% jump from 2024 but still 46.3% below the last peak in 2022¹. The crescendo, both in value and volume, drum rolls the long anticipated Great Wealth Transfer, in which the newly empowered are expected to decide how they want to ‘carry the weight’. To some, it makes sense to bring the collections to the market amidst a murky global economy (and by extension the art market) for liquidity and legal considerations. Hence the right timing culminates a concerted effort of many moving parts, such as cross-border tax-efficient strategies, risk management, and family governance.

“There's a lot that goes into the process of thinking about when the right time is to sell, especially in the United States, because of its tax implications. If you're selling during your lifetime, and you bought something very inexpensively, which ultimately sells for a high price, there's a very significant capital gains tax, in addition to all the repercussions that could happen from an income tax perspective. If you’re selling after one’s lifetime, you have 9 months to pay estate taxes after you die. And that essentially creates a real liquidity crunch for virtually every estate, because they have to create the money to be able to pay for their taxes,” explains Mari-Claudia Jiménez, Partner, Co-head of art law at Withers Art and Advisory in New York.

To others, it offers a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity to acquire distinguished and honourable materials at an equitable price arising from a pressured market. “Single‑owner collections carry an unmistakable cachet as they embody decades of deliberate stewardship and verified provenance,” comments Madeline Lissner, EVP, Global Fine Art and Major Collections at Sotheby’s. Coupled with what ArtTactic contributor Lara Varela Gajewski noted in her piece “Collecting the Collector”, auctions of this nature hone in on the power and magnetism of personality to attract a risk-adverse generation of collectors to their doors. Of the top 10 Single Owner auction sales last year, 7 achieved white glove sales status (100% sell-through rate), signalling strong demand for rarity and provenance, based on ArtTactic’s Single Owner Collection Report 2015-2025.

When public reputation becomes collectible, it stretches the inherent value of artworks in the face of rising buyer premiums, customs and duties, logistic and insurance expenses, and so on. “Most collectors initially buy artworks for personal interest or decorative value, never intending to sell them. Typically, financial value isn’t so important to people,” British collector Christian Levett told ArtTactic.

The Levett Collection consists of an impressive 1700 artworks (a third of which is dedicated to female artists of the past 150 years)², spreading across his private museum Femmes Artistes Musée Mougins (FAMM) in South of France, private residences, major museums for exhibitions, and storage. For him, collecting is never about making financial gains. It’s about giving a platform for those who deserve one but have been overlooked. “As a philanthropic collector in the art world, key to my role is helping to create cross-border dialogues and bring cultures together. Our research, exhibitions, and ongoing loans from my collection to other museums around the world, are essential to leaving a positive, educational impact.”

The same commitment rings true to Agnes Gund’s collection, three masterworks from which are heading to Christie’s marquee sales in May. The philanthropist and collector was known for championing emerging artists of her time, and supporting arts education in public schools³.

This mirrors the findings in the latest Deloitte and ArtTactic Art and Finance Report 2025, in which collectors surveyed show increasing emphasis on non-financial motivations (emotional motivations up from 60% in 2023 to 61% in 2025 and social motivations up from 36% in 2023 to 47% in 2025)⁴. To borrow the three Ls in wealth management (liquidity, longevity and legacy), cultural impacts are intrinsic in estate and collection management nowadays. “They (emerging and historically overlooked artists) offer different opportunities for collectors who seek to explore their taste with either a value-focused financial mindset (in the case of historically overlooked artists) or a growth-focused mindset (in the case of emerging artists),” writes Drew Watson, Managing Director, Head of Art Services at Bank of America. “This is why we advise collectors to love what they buy: that way, any rise in value is an added benefit, rather than a primary objective.”

As Jiménez remarks in a recent article in The Art Newspaper that billion-dollar estate sales will become the norm in the next decade in the wake of deceased collectors, it will be interesting to see how these legacy holdings find resonance within the next generation of collectors, and how they recontextualise across genres and recalibrate a narrative that strikes a chord with sellers, buyers, and everyone in between.

_{^{1 ArtTactic’s Single Owner Collection Report 2015-2025
2 https://artreview.com/portrait-of-a-philanthropist-christian-levett/
3 https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/who-is-agnes-gund-collector-1234587301/
4 p.193, Deloitte and ArtTactic Art and Finance report 2025
Cover image: Rene Magritte, Les droits de l'homme (1947-1948), sold at Christie's New York in May 2025}}