Latest news with #Riggio
Boston Globe
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
What it takes to make courage contagious
In the next few days, what looked like a solitary stand became a galvanizing one, a boulder shift that started a landslide. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up One by one, other schools announced their intent to follow Harvard's lead. 'Princeton stands with Harvard,' university president Christopher Eisgruber declared on social media. Several Big Ten schools were working together to form a ' Advertisement Harvard's audacity, it appears, triggered an epidemic of courage that continues to spread. 'You can think of that as high-level social contagion,' says Ronald Riggio, an organizational psychologist and leadership scholar at Claremont McKenna College. What happened in Cambridge, Riggio explains, led other school leaders to think: Harvard's done it, so it's OK for us to follow suit . Advertisement Social contagion has plenty of negative associations, some of which are deserved. It's hard to forget how the But the dynamics of social contagion are actually more complex than that, and they run in positive directions as well as negative ones. Emotional contagion — say, laughing along with hundreds of other audience members or tearing up alongside a devastated friend — is a largely unconscious response, arising in part from primitive regions of the brain. Behavioral contagion tends to involve more conscious thought, Riggio says, because it requires a deliberate choice to emulate what someone else is doing. The degree of conscious thought varies; teens who popped detergent pods down their throats weren't spending much time weighing the merits. Decisions widely understood as costly, like taking a moral stand, generate more conscious wrestling as people weigh the potential fallout of their actions. Social influence plays a crucial role at these fraught decision points. After Cambridge-based whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers — which showed that US officials hid Vietnam War operations from the public — he said that encounters with war resisters, including fellow Harvard alum Randy Kehler, helped convince him to release the papers. Ellsberg Advertisement In moments like this, emotional contagion helps drive behavioral uptake. Moved by what Kehler was putting on the line, Ellsberg realized he, too, was willing to risk prison — and resolved to tell Americans what he knew. This kind of thoughtful contagion is now taking hold not just at universities but in the halls of Congress. When Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland traveled to El Salvador last week to check on the welfare of his wrongfully imprisoned constituent Kilmar Abrego Garcia, he supplied a permission structure and a practical road map for other lawmakers. 'In ambiguous situations,' Riggio says, 'we look to the behavior of others to guide us.' After Van Hollen's trip, Senator Cory Booker and 'When one person helps in a situation, others follow,' says Ervin Staub, an emeritus psychology professor and altruism scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 'Not always, but often.' Prominent figures who step up first, like Van Hollen and Kehler, have outsized power to ignite courageous social contagion. In the infamous Milgram experiments, when leaders told 'teacher' participants to electrically shock 'learners' who got questions wrong, teachers were Advertisement A kind of For those looking to deploy social contagion to virtuous effect — whether college presidents, lawmakers, or activists — recent research offers some tactical counsel. In social simulations, some behaviors that seem uncomfortable must be In addition, when you take a courageous stand, it pays to be clear about what actions you'd like others to take. It's important, in other words, to 'not only look at the problematic things,' Staub says, 'but look at how we can address these problematic things.' If you've just paid a visit to an innocent person in detention, describe a specific step others can take to support their own threatened neighbors. The more clear-cut your suggested action, the more it may invite mimicry, as in the Advertisement Though courage is prone to spread overnight under the right conditions, personal and collective bravery require stubborn long-term commitment. The Trump administration has already But even an initial stand has lasting behavioral resonance. As a courageous stance spreads to others, it also tends to stick to the initiator. 'If you publicly declare your intention,' Riggio says, 'it's more likely that you're going to follow through,' since backing out would feel like a public betrayal. Social obligation, then, not only drives the contagion of courage — it steadies and sustains those who got the transmission going.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Barnes & Noble Founder's Widow Is Auctioning Off Her $250 Million Art Collection
On Thursday, Christie's announced that it will sell dozens of works by artists including Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Giacometti, and Piet Mondrian from the collection of the late Barnes & Noble founder—and former ARTnews Top 200 collector—Leonard Riggio. Valued at $250 million, the 30 or so works will go under the hammer during the house's upcoming spring sales in New York. More from Robb Report A Long-Lost Camille Claudel Sculpture Sells for $3.8 Million in Paris Blink-182 Cofounder Mark Hoppus's Banksy Painting Could Fetch $6.3 Million at Auction Justine Koons Is Getting Her Debut Solo Show in New York The book mogul's wife, Louise, is downsizing from their Park Avenue apartment—where the trove of works held court—after he passed last year. 'This is tough for me to say goodbye to old friends, but I will not put them in storage,' she said of the artworks, as reported by the New York Times. 'They need to be seen.' A Mondrian work that hung in the vestibule of the Riggio's lux apartment is due to be the auction's headline act, with a reported high estimate of over $51 million. (A similar painting by the artist titled Composition No. II sold for that record price at Sotheby's in 2022.) Christie's won the tender after a bidding war with Sotheby's. According to the New York Times, in a curious move, the latter house reportedly enlisted mega-gallery Pace to charm Louise Riggio, although Sotheby's and Pace have so far declined to comment. 'We have a longstanding relationship with Christie's,' she said. As ARTnews' Daniel Cassady wrote last week, Leonard Riggio 'was a profound collector of the Minimalists and a driving force behind the establishment of Dia:Beacon in Upstate New York.' Among the treasures Riggio kept at his Bridgehampton home was Richard Serra's 300-ton steel sculpture Sidewinder (1999), which was visible from space thanks to Google Earth satellites. The Riggio sale will be a test for the art market's health after several years of disappointing auction results, not helped by global conflict, last year's US presidential campaign, and now, it seems, President Donald Trump's plan to impose widespread tariffs. Christie's CEO Bonnie Brennan described the Riggios as 'true collectors.' Best of Robb Report The 10 Priciest Neighborhoods in America (And How They Got to Be That Way) In Pictures: Most Expensive Properties Click here to read the full article.
New York Times
20-02-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Barnes & Noble Widow to Auction $250 Million Art Collection
For decades, a small but mighty painting by the artist Piet Mondrian has greeted visitors in the grand vestibule of the Park Avenue apartment where the Barnes & Noble founder, Leonard Riggio, entertained guests. But the book mogul's death last year prompted his widow, Louise, to think about downsizing; many of the artworks that she and her husband collected would need to go. 'This is tough for me to say goodbye to old friends, but I will not put them in storage,' she said of the artworks. 'They need to be seen.' On Thursday, Christie's said it would offer nearly 30 artworks with a total estimated value in excess of $250 million in their upcoming spring sales, including works by Magritte, Picasso, Giacometti and Warhol. The Mondrian from the family's vestibule is expected to be the auction's top lot with a high estimate that is expected to top the $51 million record for a similar painting set in 2022. The announcement capped an intense bidding war between the auction house and its rival, Sotheby's, which took the unusual step of bringing in Pace Gallery as a third-party partner in an attempt to woo Riggio, according to two senior advisers close to the negotiations. (Sotheby's and Pace declined to comment.) 'We have a longstanding relationship with Christie's,' Riggio said, adding that the financial aspects of the deal were more appealing than what other companies provided. (Christie's declined to say what favorable terms it offered, though auction houses will often guarantee a minimum price for artworks to attract sellers.) The art market has suffered a significant decline in sales over the last few years, leading to industrywide layoffs and nervous sellers. The Riggio collection will test the market's strength, coming after the chaos of the presidential election but in the midst of uncertainty over how American tariffs might affect the global art trade. It will also test the mettle of a new chief executive; early this month, Bonnie Brennan was promoted into the leadership position after more than 12 years with the company. 'There is a depth and breadth to what the Riggios collected,' Brennan said in an interview, recalling how Leonard would personally attend the major auctions, waving his paddle in the air to purchase multimillion-dollar artworks. 'They are true collectors.' The art being offered at Christie's provide a more intimate view of the Riggio family's collecting habits, which are more closely associated with monumental and minimalist works. The couple have been major supporters of the Dia Art Foundation for decades, and the couple's home in Bridgehampton, N.Y., includes an outdoor sculpture by Richard Serra that can be seen from space satellites. But the artworks from the Riggio apartment in Manhattan belonged to an earlier period of collecting, one that Louise, in the interview, described as having a personal touch. 'We bought quietly,' she recalled. 'It was instinct. Art tells a story and we liked being part of that story.' Riggio had a passion for art history, using the rooms of her home to showcase the collection. For example, one René Magritte painting offered in the sale, from his 'Empire of Light' series, used to hang above the fireplace in the family's den, near works by Max Ernst and Ashile Gorky. The living room had examples by Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti and Fernand Léger, while the dining room was home to abstract expressionist works by Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and others. Still mourning the loss of her husband after nearly 45 years of marriage, Riggio said that there are some artworks from the apartment that she is not yet willing to sell. The last piece that he bought for her was a Van Gogh drawing of a little girl with a baguette under her arm. And for a birthday some years back, he presented her with a battered box signed as a gift from their dog, Cookie. 'I'm thinking it is going to be a funny picture or a shirt,' she recalled. 'It was a Degas." The collection was full of those personal memories. 'It was about our love and our time together,' Riggio said.
