O’Keeffe paintings to be auctioned
Pieces are expected to fetch $30 million; most proceeds will be used for new acquisitions, museum official says
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum plans to sell three works by the acclaimed American artist, known for her paintings of
flowers, skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes, to raise funds for new acquisitions.
The paintings to be deaccessioned from the museum’s collection include A
Street (1926), Calla Lilies on Red (1928), and Cottonwood Tree in Spring (1943), and could realize more than $30 million at auction at Sotheby’s in New York City this month.
The museum previously deaccessioned O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1936), which sold at auction
for $44.4 million in May 2014. That sale shattered previous records at Sotheby’s for a work by a female artist.
Museums have to tread carefully when deaccessioning art, or they risk situations similar to that at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass., early in 2018. The Berkshire came under fire from the Massachusetts attorney general over plans to deaccession 40 artworks, including two paintings by Norman Rockwell. At issue was whether the deaccession was in line with the museum’s mission and if it violated
Rockwell’s own wish that his works remain in Pittsfield.
The deaccessioning of the O’Keeffes, said O’Keeffe Museum director Robert Kret, is not only in line with the institution’s mission, but necessary.
“We belong to an organization called the Association of Art Museum Directors, and the current policy with AAMD is that it’s ethical and appropriate to build and refine the collection by selling artwork, but proceeds can
only be used to buy other works of art,” Kret said. The sale is expected to bring in $21.5 million for the museum’s acquisitions fund. “A lot of larger institutions deaccess things from their collections pretty frequently,” he said.
A Street is a rare work by O’Keeffe. It is part of a series of cityscapes she made between 1925 and 1929 while living in Manhattan with her husband, the photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. The painting shows the impact of Precisionism on O’Keeffe’s early works. Precisionism was an American modernist movement influenced by Cubism and Futurism. O’Keeffe, who resisted being associated with particular art movements, never considered herself an integral part of Precisionism.
A Street was a gift of the Burnett Foundation, as was Cottonwood Tree in Spring, and both were acquired by the museum in 1997. “The bulk of the collection really came from two sources: the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation that no longer exists, and the Burnett Foundation, who had gifted a number of works to us over the years,” Kret said. “They made it clear that we needed to be self-sufficient and stand on our own two feet and be able to find ways to build the collection without them.”
Kret added the donors of the artworks were kept informed of all decisions regarding the sale and were not in opposition to it.
Calla Lilies on Red, the only example of her flower paintings included in the auction, predates O’Keeffe’s 1929 arrival in New Mexico. She returned to New Mexico seasonally throughout the following decades, making Abiquiú her permanent residence in 1949. Where her paintings of New York skyscrapers are angular compositions, rendered in muted tones, her flower paintings were often vibrant, rendered in primary and secondary colors.
Cala Lilies depicts a pair of the white flowers enveloped in lush green foliage on a red background. It was a gift by philanthropist Anne Windfohr Marion and was accessioned in 1996.
O’Keeffe’s Cottonwood Tree in Spring, made much later than the other works, is a swirling, gestural abstraction and not a strict representation of a cottonwood. O’Keeffe’s work often gravitated between abstraction and representationalism, evoking the feeling and impressions the Southwestern landscape in unique compositions untethered to specific styles.
The paintings will be in two separate auctions. A Street, which has a high estimate of $18 million, and Calla Lilies on Red, with a high estimate of $12 million, will be in the Contemporary Art Evening sale Nov. 14. Cottonwood Tree in Spring, with a high estimate of $2.5 million, goes to auction Nov. 16 in Sotheby’s American Art sale.