A Piece of Barbara Gladstone’s Collection up for Sale at Sotheby’s This May

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A selection of recently passed New York art dealer Barbara Gladstone’s private collection will go up for auction for the first time this May, with names like Mike Kelley, Elizabeth Peyton, Richard Prince, and Andy Warhol on the docket.

Gladstone, who passed away last June at age 89, amassed a significant collection over 30 years. Now, 12 lots from her collection will go under the hammer in an evening sale on 15 May at Sotheby’s New York.

Sotheby’s anticipates the lots will bring over $12 million (all prices USD).

According to Artnet, many of the works had been in Gladstone’s homes in Manhattan and Long Island.

Sotheby’s Chair of the Americas Lisa Dennison spoke of the gallerist and former art history professor’s taste and influence: ‘Gladstone changed what it meant to live with art—and what it meant to believe in it’.

‘Her collection is not just a group of important works by renowned artists, but a deeply personal testament to her sharp eye, the relationships she nurtured, and the singular vision she had for contemporary art,’ Dennison said.

The highest-valued lot is Prince’s Man Crazy Nurse (2002–2003), estimated at $4 million to $6 million. The two-metre-tall portrait was first shown in a 2003 exhibition at Gladstone’s gallery before it joined her collection.

The runner-up is a blue ‘Joke’ painting by Prince dated to 1988, with an estimate between $2.5 million and $3.5 million.

Other highlights include a 1964 Andy Warhol black ‘Flowers’ painting estimated from $1 million to $1.5 million, Mike Kelley’s 2003 Memory Ware Flat #42, a large canvas embedded with buttons, pins, and chains after the Canadian folk art practice, and a 2006 self-portrait by Rudolf Stingel, Untitled (Bolego), which is estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million. —[O]

Main image: On Kawara, AUG. 8 (1975) and Andy Warhol, 'Flowers' pictured in Barbara Gladstone's New York home. Courtesy Sotheby's.