Christie's and Sotheby's Vie for Herbert Lust's $60 Million Collection, Heavy on Giacometti

Christie's and Sotheby's, the two largest auction houses in the world, are competing to acquire the art holdings of New York collector Herbert Lust — a collection valued at approximately US$60 million and rich in works by Alberto Giacometti, according to a report published on 19 August 2026 by ARTnews ARTnews.

The prize is not a few trophy paintings but hundreds of works by a single artist. Lust, a financier and one-time literature professor, befriended Giacometti and collected his work over decades, assembling what Sotheby's own catalogue writers once called one of the two finest collections of Giacometti's work ever amassed, alongside that of Milton D. Ratner Sotheby's. The friendship between collector and artist lasted until Giacometti's death in 1966 Sotheby's.

Lust's standing in the Giacometti field goes beyond ownership. His catalog raisonné — a scholarly compilation documenting an artist's complete works — titled Giacometti: The Complete Graphics and 15 Drawings, is cited as a bibliographic reference in Christie's own lot listings for Giacometti pieces Christie's. Sotheby's has likewise listed his 1991 book Alberto Giacometti, The Complete Graphics as literature in its auction catalogues Sotheby's. Few collectors turn up in the footnotes of the very auctions that might one day sell their holdings.

Both houses have courted Lust publicly for years. Sotheby's has published an editorial article, a video and a slideshow devoted to him on its website, profiling what it called his "accidental and extraordinary" life as a collector Sotheby's. That relationship-building now converges with a concrete financial contest: which house can offer the most attractive terms to win the collection outright, whether for public auction or private sale.

The Giacometti market adds a layer of risk to whatever deal emerges. At a Sotheby's auction in May 2025, a single textured Giacometti sculpture accounted for nearly 30 percent of the sale's presale low estimate of US$240.3 million, and the sale as a whole underperformed The New York Times. A collection this deep in one artist means its value rides on demand for that artist at the moment of sale.

ARTnews did not specify which house is currently ahead, nor whether a deal would involve a guarantee — a sum the auction house commits to pay the seller regardless of bidding outcome. For Lust's collection, though, the contest itself signals that both houses see enough in those hundreds of Giacometti works to fight for them.