Artworks Revealed for Nina Simone Benefit Auction

Pace Gallery New York +6 locations Follow +

Eleven works by leading contemporary artists will go under the hammer at the Nina Simone Childhood Home Benefit Auction from 12 to 22 May, Pace announced today.

Co-curators Adam Pendleton and Serena Williams hope to put a spell on collectors with their selections in order to restore the legendary singer’s childhood home in Tryon, North Carolina.

‘Each of the artists Adam and I have selected for the auction has a unique, powerful voice, and we’ve been moved by their generosity and enthusiasm for this important cause,’ Williams said.

Filmmaker Robert Longo has donated his large-scale charcoal drawing Untitled (Nina) (2021). Referencing the Black Panther Party, the work also represents ‘the power of an endangered yet resilient spirit’.

Post-war and contemporary abstract minimalist Stanley Whitney—who describes Simone as ‘a courageous human being who continues to put a lot of Love in the world’—is offering the colourful geometrical abstraction Nina in the Sky with Diamonds (2023).’

Rashid Johnson has offered up a ‘Bruise Painting’ (2021-ongoing) titled Nina’s Blues (2023), and British-born artist Cecily Brown presents her oil painting Runaway (2021).

Artworks by Martin Puryear, Mary Weatherford, Anicka Yi, Julie Mehretu, Ellen Gallagher, and Sarah Sze—who currently has a show at the Guggenheim—will also feature in the auction and an accompanying exhibition at Pace’s West 25th Street gallery.

Pendleton, who initially proposed the idea of raising funds to restore Simone’s childhood home, is donating the brooding silkscreen ink on canvas Untitled (Days for Nina) (2023).

‘Nina Simone is one of the most important musical artists of the twentieth century. I’m inspired to be able to protect her legacy by preserving her childhood home,’ Pendleton said. ‘Her music, her vision, cannot be forgotten.’

Pendleton, Gallagher, Johnson, and Mehretu jointly purchased the run-down home in 2017, and have been working with the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund to preserve its legacy.

‘This house contains multitudes—simultaneously humble and a truly specific American treasure—that speak to the beauty of Tryon as a community that aided in raising Nina Simone and supporting her exceptionally unique gift’, Gallagher said. —[O]

Main image: Sarah Sze, Spell (2023) (detail). Oil paint, acrylic paint, inkjet prints, acrylic polymers, string, and ink on diabond, aluminium, wood and paper. 193 cm x 281.9 cm x 7.6 cm. © Sarah Sze. Courtesy Sarah Sze. Photo Credit: Sarah Sze Studio.