GROUP SHOW

The benefit auction—which is co-curated by artist Adam Pendleton and the tennis champion, entrepreneur, and arts patron Venus Williams—will be conducted online by Sotheby’s leading up to and following the in-person gala at Pace’s 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York on May 20. This sale brings together marquee artworks—several of which are named for Nina Simone—in honor and recognition of the musical icon’s monumental contributions to the arts and social activism.

The artists who have donated artworks in honour of Simone’s memory are Cecily Brown; Ellen Gallagher; Rashid Johnson; Robert Longo; Julie Mehretu; Adam Pendleton; Martin Puryear; Sarah Sze; Mary Weatherford; Stanley Whitney; and Anicka Yi.

In the way of painting, the auction will include Runaway, a 2021 work by Brown, whose solo exhibition Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through December 3; Johnson’s Bruise Painting “Nina’s Blues” (2023); a painting by Mehretu titled New Dawn, Sing (for Nina) (2023); a new silkscreen ink on canvas work by Pendleton; a painting by Sze, whose solo show Sarah Sze: Timelapse continues at the Guggenheim Museum in New York through September 10; a vibrant new abstraction by Weatherford; Nina in the Sky with Diamonds (2023) by Whitney; and Yi’s 2022 composition The Mother Tongue. The sale will also feature Longo’s large-scale 2021 charcoal drawing Untitled (Nina); Gallagher’s 2005 print Abu Simbel; and an Intaglio print created by Puryear in 2005.

Online bidding in the auction on Sotheby’s website will be available to the public starting at 11 AM EDT on Friday, May 12, and will close on Monday, May 22 at 3 PM EDT. All the artworks in the auction will be available to view in person—in addition to online—at Pace’s West 25th Street gallery in New York from May 12–20. Key lots in the sale will be highlighted by Sotheby’s auctioneer Kimberly Pirtle during the in-person gala at Pace.