The art collector Agnes Gund, who died last September at age 87, was the kind of philanthropist about whom people wistfully say, “They don’t make them like that anymore.” She donated more than 1,500 works to museums and sold others to fund causes spanning criminal justice reform and reproductive rights. As she neared the end of her life, she made no secret of the fact that her coffers were nearly empty and most of her collection was spoken for.
Most — but not all. In May, at its marquee evening sales in New York, Christie’s will sell three of the works that Gund kept in her Manhattan apartment. That small number of objects belies a hefty payday: The auction house expects the trio to generate as much as $145 million. The proceeds will be used to settle Gund’s estate.
The star of the group — which Gund cherished so much that she lent it to a museum only once, more than 50 years ago — is an enveloping abstract painting by Mark Rothko in hues of forest green, indigo, black and cherry red. Created in 1964, it is estimated to sell for at least $80 million.
The estate is also parting with a frenetically scratched and daubed canvas by Cy Twombly from 1961 (estimated to sell for $40 million to $60 million) and a Surrealist-inspired assemblage box by Joseph Cornell, created around 1948 and containing an image of a Medici princess (estimate: $3 million to $5 million). For years, Gund hung all three works within view of her favorite white sofa.
Experts anticipate that Gund’s star power will inject a jolt of energy into the high-end art market, which has begun to bounce back after a three-year slump. Last fall, a Gustav Klimt portrait generated $236.4 million at Sotheby’s, becoming the second most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.
“I know we say this all the time: ‘It’s the best, it’s the best,’” said Sara Friedlander, Christie’s chairman of postwar and contemporary art, referring to the hyperbole auction houses often use to promote their wares. Gund, she said, “really chose to live with the best.”
To win the business, Christie’s offered Gund’s estate a financial guarantee, agreeing to pay a minimum price for the collection in advance. Friedlander expects the Rothko to exceed the Abstract Expressionist painter’s auction record of $86.8 million, including fees, set 14 years ago for a blazing composition, “Orange, Red, Yellow” (1961).
Gund bought her favorite Rothko, “No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe),” directly from the artist in 1967, several years after he shifted to a broody, darker palette. “Aggie had said, ‘I want a bright one,’” Nicole Gallo, the longtime curator of Gund’s collection and a trustee of her estate, said in an interview. Rothko convinced her to buy “No. 15” instead. The painting became “the pulse of the apartment,” Gallo said.
Joseph Cornell was one of the few artists Gund collected but never met. On her way to visit him, “she was told that if he didn’t like you, he wouldn’t invite you in, so she got nervous and turned around,” Gallo said, adding that it was “one of her big regrets.” The wooden box, from Cornell’s best-known series inspired by the Renaissance, completed at the peak of his fame, places marbles, feathers and thread alongside the ghostly portraits of Bin de’ Medici, who died of a fever at age five. The assemblage delivers unsettling alchemy.
Asked what drove her to give away the immense fortune she had inherited from her father, George Gund II — who served as president of the Cleveland Trust Company — Gund frequently responded concisely: “guilt.” She used the money her family made from real estate, investing and brewing to support institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she was board president for 11 years, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she attended classes as a child. She bought art with museums in mind. “She would say, ‘Let’s check in and see what MoMA needs, what Cleveland needs,’” Gallo said.
Had Gund hoarded the art she amassed over nearly 60 years, the collection would be worth “billions” of dollars, Friedlander estimates, eclipsing the record-setting $1.6 billion estate of the Microsoft founder Paul Allen, which Christie’s sold in 2022.
The art adviser Todd Levin described Gund as “sui generis — truly an ideal collector.” Her philanthropy and her role as a connector in the art world made artists and galleries want to sell her their best work, he said.
Later in life, Gund capitalized on the ballooning market for contemporary art to advance social-justice causes. In 2017, she sold the 1962 Pop Art painting, “Masterpiece,” by Roy Lichtenstein — a jewel of her collection — for $165 million to the hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen. She used the proceeds to establish Art for Justice, an initiative dedicated to ending mass incarceration in the United States. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2023, she sold another Lichtenstein for $3.8 million to finance organizations supporting reproductive rights.
By then, Gund said that she had almost nothing left to give. But Gallo hinted that more of Gund’s art is likely to come to market after all — and that the proceeds may aid the causes she cared about most. “There is some art left that could follow this,” Gallo said. She declined to specify any details of what Gund had planned beyond that it would be “happening in stages.” But she acknowledged that “things that were tenets in her life will probably be tenets in her passing.”
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