Robin Pogrebin reports that the Warhol Foundation is selling the remainder of its art holdings, some 20,000 items. Many will be sold by Christie’s online which adds fuel to their online ambitions:
Beginning this fall the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Artswill disperse its entire collection of Warhols, donating some and selling others through Christie’s auction house as it shifts almost exclusively into a grant-making organization, foundation officials said in interviews.
The sales will take several years to complete and are expected to garner about $100 million, increasing the foundation’s endowment, from which it makes grants to nonprofit arts organizations.
Though the foundation no longer holds any big-ticket works by Warhol, it still possesses a bevy of paintings, prints, photographs and drawings, some of which the public has never seen. They include “Three Targets,” a large horizontal black-and-white canvas of paint and silk-screen depicting three targets with gunshots, expected to sell for $1 million to $1.5 million; a Jacqueline Kennedy collage from the 1960s, estimated at $200,000 to $300,000; and a “Self-Portrait in Fright Wig” from a ’70s Polaroid print, estimated at $15,000 to $20,000.
Kelly Crow gets a response from Alberto Mugrabi:
Alberto Mugrabi, a New York dealer whose family owns at least 800 Warhols, said the estate has hinted for over a year that it might want to close up shop, and Mr. Mugrabi said he and a few other dealers offered to buy it, but the foundation declined. Now, he said, he worries the foundation will “dilute” the Warhol brand by flooding the market with too material at once. “It’s ridiculous—they have a great product, and they’re pushing it out into the market like cattle,” he added.
Warhol Foundation to Disperse Collection (New York Times)
Foundation to Put 20,000 Warhols on the Market (Wall Street Journal)
