Three masterworks from the Phillips Collection sold at auction Thursday evening for a combined $13,413,000. The D.C. institution forged ahead with the sale of works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove and Georges Seurat deaccessioned from its permanent collection despite outcry from some of its influential supporters.
The O’Keeffe painting, “Large Dark Red Leaves on White,” sold for $7,858,000, just under the $8 million high estimate. The painting by her friend Arthur Dove, “Rose and Locust Stump,” sold for $681,000, well under the estimate of $1.2 million to 1.8 million. And a rare drawing by Seurat sold for $4,874,000, just under the high estimate of $5 million.
The funds raised by these and other, less valuable deaccessions will be used to commission and acquire works by contemporary artists, according to the Phillips’s director, Jonathan Binstock.
The sales became controversial a week ago, after The Washington Post reported that the Members, an advisory body to the Phillips, objected to the sales on the grounds that they were superb works acquired by museum founders Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips and therefore integral to the collection.
Liza Phillips, a granddaughter of Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, described the decision as a “shame.” Phillips, who, as head of the Members, has an automatic seat on the board of trustees, had been pushing behind the scenes for more than a year to get the museum to change course. Finally, the museum leadership and the Members arrived at a compromise: The planned sales would go ahead, but future deaccessions would be more heavily restricted.
But Phillips and others continue to see the sales as a mistake. The art historian and curator Robert Storr, who was invited to join the Members board over a year ago, wrote (in an open letter seen by The Post) that he hoped the Phillips would “consider rescinding this absurd gambit, made in the vain hope that you can mollify or bully everyone concerned who has expressed reservations about it.”
Storr described the Seurat drawing put up for sale by the Phillips as “a gem … without equal and without a comparable example anywhere in his oeuvre to my knowledge.”
“The Georgia O’Keeffe,” he continued, “belongs to a group of early works by her that I thought were valued as core examples of her development, but which are being treated as ‘interchangeable assets.’ Ditto the Arthur Dove, which is another gem without obvious equivalents.”
Janet P. Bruce, an acclaimed artist and former Phillips Collection employee of 10 years, also wrote a letter to the board of trustees after news of the planned sales was published by The Post, calling the decision “deeply troubling.”
Bruce, who said she “personally supervised the photography of every painting” for the Phillips Collection’s “Summary Catalogue,” said Binstock “has not yet earned the authority nor demonstrated the scholarship or stewardship required to justify selling off works of such significance. His role is to raise funds for acquisitions, not to liquidate core holdings.”
The decision, continued Bruce, “takes a wrecking ball to Duncan Phillips’s vision and risks becoming your legacy as trustees. … Worse than a mistake, it is a blunder. And one that must be reversed.”
Other highlights from Thursday night’s sale included a 1940 work by Frida Kahlo, titled “El sueño (La cama),” selling for $54.7 million, setting a record both for Kahlo and for any woman artist at auction. A still-life by Van Gogh from the Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection sold earlier in the evening for $62.7 million. On Tuesday, a portrait by Gustav Klimt became the most valuable modern artwork sold at auction, bringing in $236.4 million.
At Wednesday night’s Sotheby’s contemporary sale, two works from the Phillips Collection by Howard Mehring and one by Leland Bell sold for a combined $77,470, while a sculpture by Anish Kapoor estimated at $200,000 to $300,000 failed to reach its reserve and was passed in.
A still-life of peaches by Henri Fantin-Latour, also from the collection and estimated at $40,000 to $60,000, will go under the hammer Friday. A sculpture by Pablo Picasso and a work on paper by Milton Avery will be sold at a later date.
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