In the wake of last month’s Paul Allen sales at Christie’s and William Paley dispersal at Sotheby’s, market observers were left to ponder two imponderables:
—What philanthropies will receive the proceeds from the record-smashing sales of Paul Allen’s trove at Christie’s? The exasperating answer is: Nobody (except the principals) knows for sure.
—Did the Paley dispersal comport with the collector’s own wishes regarding the future of his holdings? The Museum of Modern Art’s 1992 press release, as well as comments published in the voluminous memoir of William Rubin, MoMA’s late director of painting and sculpture (who had laboriously and successfully courted Paley) strongly indicate otherwise: As I noted in my Impaling Paley post, MoMA’s announcement had described the Paley transfer as a “donation” of “one of the most important private collections to be entrusted to a public institution in recent years” [emphasis added].
It said nothing about offloading a sizable portion (22 of 81 works) to bankroll other purposes:
Both Allen and Paley were giants in their respective fields—Allen was a tech titan, as co-founder (with Bill Gates) of Microsoft; Paley was a broadcasting titan, as longtime head of CBS.
When I recently asked Edward Lewine, Christie’s vice president for communications, if anything more could be said about the identity of the beneficiary or beneficiaries of the Allen proceeds, he replied:
The following is the only information we will be providing on this question: “All of the estate’s proceeds from this historic sale will be dedicated to philanthropy, pursuant to Mr. Allen’s wishes.” We do not anticipate any [further] announcement related to philanthropy. The consignor has been quite consistent on this point.
Not easily discouraged, I then contacted Peter Kim, manager of media relations for the Allen Institute (which seeks to “unlock the complexities of bioscience and advance our knowledge to improve human health”). Kim referred me to the press office of Vulcan, the self-described “engine behind philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen’s network of organizations and initiatives. Empowered by Paul’s vision to make a positive difference in the world, we work to be catalysts for change.”
The Vulcan Media Relations Team sent me this non-reply:
Thank you for your inquiry about the outcome of Christie’s auction: “Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection.” Details about the philanthropic plan Paul envisioned will be shared at an appropriate time in the future. We have recorded your interest on our media list and will send information as it becomes available.
I won’t hold my breath. Cue journalists’ least-favorite dance tune—Runaround Sue.
That said, Christie’s adroitly played the philanthropy card at the Nov. 9 single-owner sale in New York, with the auctioneers cajoling attendees to to up their bids “for charity.” (Which charities? We still don’t know. Likely suspects could be The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and his other eponymous nonprofits.)
Kimerly Rorschach, former director of the Seattle Art Museum and former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, told me she had no knowledge of which causes will benefit from the Allen windfall. But she did tell me this:
I was very heartened by an announcement a few weeks ago that the Allen Foundation would be making some $10 million in grants to Seattle area arts organizations (reported by the Seattle Times).
The presale exhibition at Christie’s attracted lines of curious non-bidders, both outside on the street, and inside Christie’s:
Loans of at least two of the works were requested for prestigious museum exhibitions—this delicate beauty was said to have been requested for the Met’s planned exhibition of “Van Gogh Cypresses,” May-August 2023. (I am currently checking this with the Met, and will update if and when I learn more. I do not see that show on the Met’s exhibition website.)
Sold at Christie’s for $117.18 million, an auction record for the artist
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
…and this vibrant still life, requested for a planned Bonnard show at the Kimbell Museum and the Phillips Collection. (The latter has just named a new director to succeed the irreplaceable Dorothy Kosinski, effective Mar. 1.):
Sold at Christie’s for $6.66 million
Unlike a previous “Sale of the Century”—the May 2018 dispersal of the late David Rockefeller‘s collection (also handled by Christie’s), which the Wall Street Journal had suggested was potentially “a billion-dollar sale” (but which fell short, at $835.1 million)—the Allen sale easily lived up to optimistic expectations, fetching a whopping total of $1.62 billion, in two successive auctions. The Rockefeller Effect has been outstripped by “The Allen Effect,” with a packed house, rapid-fire bidding, and (unusually) a tag-team of two auctioneers—Adrien Meyer and Jussi Pylkkänen—to keep the pace lively.
With $1.5 billion in art knocked down in the first of the two sales, the Allen dispersal was touted by the auction house as “the most valuable private-collection sale of all time.” (Sorry, David.) Some 20 artists’ auction records were achieved, of which these were the priciest:
A much larger “False Start” by Jasper Johns (oil on canvas, rather than collage on fiberboard) was famously sold in 1986 by David Geffen to Ken Griffin for $80 million.
There was no secret about the beneficiaries of the Rockefeller sales: It had been publicly announced that proceeds were to benefit 12 named philanthropies favored by David Rockefeller during his lifetime (including the Museum of Modern Art, where he had ably served as chairman).
Similarly, Sotheby’s identified the beneficiaries of the proceeds from its star catch this autumn:
The legacy of William S. Paley’s charitable work continues with the sale of his masterful collection, supporting New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Greenpark Foundation and The Paley Museum.
But that two-city dispersal (in New York and London) of 22 works (one of which, a Derain, failed to sell) was problematic in a more fundamental way: As I previously noted here, the arduous courtship of Paley, MoMA’s former chairman and then chairman emeritus, by William Rubin, MoMA’s then director of painting and sculpture (who coveted Paley’s collection for the museum) included (in the words of the late Rubin’s “A Curator’s Quest”) “a plan [subsequently realized] for a posthumous show of his collection at the museum—he could not bear to be without his pictures at home [emphasis added]—to be accompanied by a beautiful catalogue, and followed by a three-year series of showings of the entire collection in a number of major American and foreign museums.” If he “couldn’t bear to be without is pictures at home” while he was alive, would Paley have supported their being scattered after his death?
The late Grace Glueck‘s November 1990 NY Times report on the transfer of Paley’s collection to MoMA was enigmatic about its future fate:
A [Paley] foundation spokesman said that the paintings would go to the Modern soon, but that final ownership would be deferred [emphasis added].
It turned out that “final ownership” was “deferred” forever, unless interested buyers forked over cash to acquire some of them. The Sotheby’s dispersal did reach MoMA’s monetary goal: As reported by Kelly Crow in the Wall Street Journal, “The foundation said it decided to sell the art to raise roughly $70 million for several charitable causes, including helping the museum [Museum of Modern Art, where he had served as a trustee, president and chairman] expand its digital footprint.”
According to Sotheby’s, the hammer total for the Paley trove was $74 million ($84.8 million, with fees), against a presale estimate of $64.5-80.3 million.
Auctioning off some of Paley’s cherished holdings to bankroll a new endowment “to support MoMA’s ambitious goals in digital media and technology” ran the risk of being seen by potential future donors as an act of posthumous bad faith. (Paley died in 1990.) In wooing future donors, a track record of honoring donor intent matters.
MoMA implicitly recognized this problem by channeling the ghost of the deceased: In its Sept. 14 press release announcing its plan to sell artworks “owned by [Paley’s] Foundation but placed under the stewardship of the Museum after his death,” MoMA stated this:
A far-sighted [clairvoyant?] bequest by Mr. Paley provided for 81 works from his art collection to be owned by his Foundation but placed under the stewardship of the Museum after his death, with the understanding that MoMA and the [Paley] Foundation would have the flexibility and freedom over time to determine together how these works could best be used to serve the public and the changing needs of the institution.
Over the past year, the Foundation and MoMA discussed the heightened importance of new media in reaching and engaging audiences, a subject that would have been of keen interest to Mr. Paley [emphasis added], who…was a trailblazer in the communications industry. The Foundation and MoMA decided that the best way to support the Museum’s ambitious goals in media and technology, and to make new strategic acquisitions, would be for 29 of the artworks that are owned by the Foundation and in the Museum’s care to be offered for sale….
Glenn D. Lowry, the David Rockefeller Director of The Museum of Modern Art, said, “It is a testament to the visionary philanthropy of William S. Paley that the bequest he made through his Foundation anticipated that, over time, the needs of the Museum would evolve in ways that could not have been foreseen or even imagined 30 years ago [emphasis added].
Certainly Paley was unlikely “to have foreseen” (let alone approved) the conversion of his 1919 Picasso (below) into “a new endowment” at MoMA, “established by the Paley Foundation to support MoMA’s ambitious goals in digital media and technology,” as described in The Philanthropy of William S. Paley, a feature on Sotheby’s website by freelance writer Christian House. This had been in Paley’s collection since 1946:
Sold at Sotheby’s for $37.1 million (including fees)
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
The conversion of art museums’ holdings into ready cash to be applied to purposes other than art purchases has long been taboo in this country. But it was rendered more “acceptable” by the recent dicey decision of the Association of Art Museum Directors to loosen its formerly strict limitation on the use of art-sale proceeds for acquisitions only.
Surely there are museums that would have been delighted to display the above Picasso that was stashed in MoMA’s storeroom. A better way to handle major museums’ supposed superfluity of exhibition-worthy works is suggested by the collection-sharing program of Art Bridges, spearheaded by the Crystal Bridges Museum’s founder, Alice Walton. According to that program’s Exhibitions Marketplace website, “Support is often available to cover the costs associated with bringing them [the prepackaged exhibitions] to your museum.”
Who would have thought I’d be citing Alice Walton as a standard-bearer for collection ethics? In this instance, she is.
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