Somewhere Between Worth Avenue and Port Royal, a Wall Is About to Make Room for a Rothko

A single collection valued at about $100 million is going on the block at Sotheby's, and the roll call is the sort that makes a Palm Beach dinner table go quiet: Rothko, Lichtenstein, and Ed Ruscha among them. The headline lot is a Rothko, not a canvas but a work on paper, carrying an estimate of $15 million. A Ruscha in the same sale is expected to fetch exactly as much. That a field of hovering color and a piece by the artist who turned words into pictures now sit at the same number says something about the eye that assembled this group. Miami will admire the Lichtensteins, Palm Beach will admire the Rothko, and Naples will admire the estimate. For readers from the island to the Gulf, this is a sale worth following, if only to learn which neighbor's living room turns reverent next season.

With reporting from Robb Report.