Donors’ Divorce: Metropolitan Museum’s Loss Is Sotheby’s Gain, as Fisch Davidson Trove is Dispersed

I did a doubletake on Tuesday when an email from Sotheby’s hit my inbox, grandly promoting “The Greatest Private Collection of Baroque Masterpieces Assembled in Modern Times,” as the auction house described its Fisch Davidson offerings—10 selections from the collection assembled by Mark Fisch and Rachel Davidson. Leading off the announcement was a hyperbolic blurb from that authoritative arbiter of old-master excellence—Keith Christiansen, the Metropolitan Museum’s recently retired chairman of European paintings.

Here’s Keith’s extravagant encomium:

Here are three fleshy highlights from the 10 Fisch Davidson works that are headed to the auction block. You can see why Keith remarked that “there is nothing shy about these pictures”:

Christiansen’s praise for a collection about to be auctioned (on Jan. 26 in NYC, with a total presale estimate “in the range of $40-60m” for the 10 works) brought to mind a previous reference by Sotheby’s to another curatorial voice:

Robert Storr, ex-senior curator @MuseumModernArt, where he organized the 2002 Richter survey, goes commercial, deploying his “expert voice” in a promotional video for @Sothebys, wherein he extols an offering in the upcoming contemporary auction in London: https://t.co/6zf2xpJxpJ

— Lee Rosenbaum (@CultureGrrl) October 6, 2022

Keith unequivocally assured me that he wasn’t “going commercial”:

I accepted NO money and actually was offered none.  Quite apart from friendship and the support, it is matter of—forgive me, as I am a child of the ‘60s—the corruption of money.

Keith stated that he had no role in arranging or advising on the auction. He added:

I am sorry to see the collection dispersed….On occasion, Mr. [Mark] Fisch has asked my opinion of works of art he was considering. He is a personal friend and he and Rachel Davidson have been extremely generous to the [Met’s] Department of European Paintings, having donated or contributed major works.

Fisch is also a member of the Met’s board of trustees.

Among the works that the Met has received over the years from the Fisch Davidson Collection (which I identified through a search on the museum’s collection website) are: The Baptism of Christ by Jacopo Bassano; Madonna and Child with Saints by Ludovico Carracci; The Penitent Magdalen by Corrado Giaquinto.

When I asked Christiansen whether the Met had hoped to receive the works that are now being sent to auction, he replied:

Every curator who helps build a collection or offers advice hopes some of those works will enter the Museum. As I noted, Mr. Fisch has been really incredibly generous, so on that score I can only say how grateful I am. Of course I would have loved even further gifts, but that is something quite different.

Nowhere in the the auction house’s emailed press release (for which I could not find an online link) is it mentioned that the sale of works assembled by Mark Fisch and his estranged wife, Rachel Davidson, is likely to have been divorce-driven (as was last May’s Macklowe dispersal, also at Sotheby’s). Neither Sotheby’s nor Christiansen would comment on whether the sale was serving as a device for dividing the couple’s assets.

To be auctioned at Sotheby’s New York on Jan. 26, the Fisch Davidson works are on public view in New York through today (Oct. 27) and will return on November 4-13, as part of Sotheby’s marquee auction-week exhibition. Highlights will travel to Los Angeles, Hong Kong and London this fall, before returning for the presale exhibition this January in New York.

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