Our friends at Pi-eX have provided us with the last 12 years of hammer totals for the Impressionist and Modern May Evening sales and the Contemporary Evening sales. These totals reflect only the regularly held Evening sales and exclude special collections like the Rockefeller sale last year and special auctions like the curated "masterpiece" sales of previous years.

The combined low estimate of the Impressionist and Modern Evening sales is in the mid-$500m range. For Contemporary art, that number is closer to low end of the $700m range.

Impressionist and Modern art could easily out perform but based on recent years, the number is likely to be lower than last year but higher than the previous peak year of 2015. The number of Impressionist and Modern works brought to auction continues to come down even as the value rises in these sales. That's a reflection of the increasing asset value of art in general and Modern works in particular.