Phillips’ Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale at 432 Park Avenue on May 19 carries an $86.94 million low estimate, led by Andy Warhol’s 1964 silkscreen Sixteen Jackies at a $15–20 million estimate. For a Manhattan collector base that holds the densest concentration of Warhol provenance in the world — Pop-era paper that has cycled through Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, and Madison Avenue collections for six decades — the auction is the freshest 2026 valuation read coming.
The sale closes out New York’s May fortnight after Christie’s $399M Impressionist & Modern Evening Sale on May 13 and Sotheby’s $433.1M Mnuchin and Now & Contemporary doubleheader on May 14. With Phillips at $86.94M low and a $125.7M high estimate, the three houses are tracking to clear $1B for the New York spring cycle before the morning sessions close on May 21.
The Warhol headline lot
Sixteen Jackies, 1964, arranges a single press photograph from the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, repeated sixteen times in black-and-white silkscreen on a single canvas. The work was originally part of the twenty-four Jackies Warhol included in his 1965 Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia exhibition. Philadelphia collectors David and Gerry Pincus acquired the painting that same year; it remained in the Pincus Collection until 2006, when it entered the Macklowe Collection. Sotheby’s sold it from the Macklowe in 2021 for $20.2 million.
The Phillips $15–20 million estimate sits below the 2021 hammer — a deliberate signal that Phillips has set the floor at a level that protects the consignor while leaving room for the room to bid the lot back to its prior peak. For Manhattan Warhol holders, the question is whether the room takes Sixteen Jackies back to $20M-plus on May 19 or whether the estimate represents the new ceiling for Death and Disaster-adjacent Warhol material.
The supporting catalog
Phillips structured the catalog around a second Warhol — a 1967 Self-Portrait at a $3–5 million estimate — and Warhol’s 4 Colored Marilyns (Reversal Series) at $4–6 million. The Warhol stack alone covers roughly $22–31 million of the low estimate. Jean Dubuffet’s Liqueurs, musique, chemiserie (avec sept voitures) brings $1.2–1.8 million, and Wayne Thiebaud’s Self-Portrait at $1.5–2.5 million adds depth from the postwar American figurative side. The catalog leans into the names that move quickly when the contemporary tape is functional.
Diamond District and Park Avenue read
For the Manhattan luxury asset market, the May 19 sale matters in two specific ways. First, it produces the spring 2026 trade tape on Warhol Pop-era and Death and Disaster material — paper that anchors a meaningful share of the contemporary collateral lenders see on Park Avenue and the Upper East Side. A $15–20M print on Sixteen Jackies resets the comp set for similar-grade Warhol works that have moved or been pledged at the institutional and family-office level in recent cycles.
Second, the catalog’s mid-range — the Thiebaud, Dubuffet, and second-Warhol layer — generates the comparable transactions that matter for the Diamond District and Tribeca-Gallery-Belt collateral that doesn’t sit at the trophy tier. Auction comparables drive valuation reports; valuation reports drive loan-to-value math; loan-to-value math drives where the money lends. The May 19 Phillips evening will produce the most useful tape Manhattan contemporary lenders see this spring.
What to watch on the night
The room signals to monitor: where Sixteen Jackies opens versus the $15M low; whether bidding clears the 2021 Macklowe print at $20.2M; and whether the second-tier Warhol material — the Self-Portrait and Marilyns — clears at or above midpoint. If the Warhol stack holds, the May fortnight closes with a clear $1B-plus result and a refreshed comp set across blue-chip postwar collateral. If Warhol drifts, lenders will mark the Phillips tape rather than the Christie’s and Sotheby’s prints from earlier in the week.
From the Borro desk: For the broader cross-market read, see Borro’s coverage of Sotheby’s $433.1 million Mnuchin and Now & Contemporary result.
Related coverage: See Phillips New York Watch Auction XIV — Patek 1518 Pink Gold and $2.5 Billion New York Auction Season and the Diamond District.
