Dia Foundation to Sell Works to Start Acquisition Fund
Cy Twombly’s “Poems to the Sea” (1959), left, and John Chamberlain’s “Candy Andy” (1963) are among works to be auctioned by the Dia Foundation in November to start an acquisition fund.
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: June 27, 2013
There hasn’t been any news about the Dia Art Foundation since it announced more than a year ago that it had bought the former Alcamo Marble building at 541 West 22nd Street in Chelsea. Dia is in fund-raising mode, trying to secure at least half the money needed to build its new Manhattan home on that site and on two spaces either side of it.
Dia closed its two Chelsea galleries in 2004, saying it had outgrown the buildings. Those who want to see its permanent collection — primarily works from the 1960s to the present — can visit its outpost along the Hudson River in Beacon, N.Y.
Philippe Vergne, the Dia director, said this week that he had more on his mind that just the new building, though. Surprisingly, the foundation has no acquisition fund for its collection, which includes works by artists like Warhol, Walter De Maria, Joseph Beuys, Robert Ryman and John Chamberlain. “Dia cannot be a mausoleum,” Mr. Vergne said. “It needs to grow and develop.”
So the foundation plans to sell a group of paintings and sculptures at Sotheby’s in New York on Nov. 13 and 14, hoping to raise at least $20 million for an acquisition budget.
The works for sale include pieces by Cy Twombly, Chamberlain and Barnett Newman. In 1991 Dia gave the Menil Collection in Houston six of its best works by Twombly in anticipation of the Twombly Gallery that opened there in 1995. Mr. Vergne said that when he started evaluating Dia’s collection he felt it no longer made sense to keep the remaining Twomblys because there are not enough to fill a gallery.
The Sotheby’s sale will include 14 works by Twombly from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, including “Poems to the Sea,” a suite of 24 drawings from 1959 created when the artist moved to Sperlonga, a fishing village between Rome and Naples. “Poems” is expected to sell for $6 million to $8 million.
Chamberlain has been crucial to Dia since its founding in 1974. “Dia has about 100 Chamberlains, and even after the sale we will still have among the largest and deepest representation of works by him,” Mr. Vergne said.
Among those being sold is “Shortstop,” from 1958, one of the artist’s first sculptures fashioned from crushed automobile parts. It is estimated to bring $1.5 million to $2 million.
Dia has also decided to sell its only Newman, “Genesis — The Break,” a 1946 abstract canvas that is a precursor to the artist’s so-called zip paintings, which feature feathery bands of contrasting color. It is estimated at $3.5 million to $4.5 million. (Dia tried unsuccessfully to sell “Genesis — The Break” before, in 1985, to raise money for an endowment.)
Mr. Vergne said it was premature to say what he planned to buy with the auction proceeds, but he did give a hint: “There are things at Beacon that are on long-term loan and don’t belong to us,” he said. He was referring to works by the German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher and by Louise Bourgeois.
MORE KELLYS AT MOMA
Ellsworth Kelly’s 90th birthday on May 31 has become a summer-long celebration, with exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Detroit, as well as Paris and London. At the Museum of Modern Art, which has a show of 14 paintings from Mr. Kelly’s “Chatham Series” on view through Sept. 8, the occasion was also an excuse for the museum’s curators to assess their Kelly holdings and come up with a plan to barter some for better ones.
MoMA was an early supporter of Mr. Kelly. In 1959 Dorothy Miller, one of its first curators, organized “Sixteen Americans,” the first show there to feature his work. The next year it bought “Running White,” a black canvas with a giant white swirl that appears to be moving. It now has 22 Kelly paintings and sculptures, along with prints and drawings. Many of these works are regularly on view, but others have languished in storage.
“We decided to collaborate with the artist,” said Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, “to see how we could best enhance the collection.” She, Mr. Kelly and Matthew Marks, the artist’s Chelsea dealer, devised a plan for Mr. Kelly to trade five works from his own collection for paintings and sculptures from MoMA’s.
Three were even exchanges with Mr. Kelly. But because of differences in value among the works, trustees stepped in to help the museum with promised gifts. Marie-Josée Kravis, MoMA’s president, and her husband, Henry, the Manhattan financier, and Glenn Dubin, a trustee, and his wife, Eva, bought works from Mr. Kelly and promised them to the museum. In addition, Agnes Gund, the museum’s president emerita, has promised the museum a sixth work, “Orange Green,” a 1964 painting she owns.
“Two of the works from the 1950s are paintings that Ellsworth had never been willing to part with,” Ms. Temkin said. In exchange, the museum gave Mr. Kelly two works of lesser importance from the same period. The museum got “Fête à Torcy,” a 1952 painting named for a village outside Paris where the artist spent the summer. It is composed of two canvas panels separated by a thin, dark wood strip. It also received “Two Blacks, White and Blue” (1955), a multipanel painting inspired by tugboat smokestacks in the harbor near his Lower Manhattan studio.
CHRISTIE’S DEPARTURES
After a decade at Christie’s, Joshua Holdeman left two weeks ago to join Sotheby’s, where in March he will become a vice chairman working globally with various departments, including postwar art and design.
Mr. Holdeman, who was Christie’s international director of 20th-century art, is yet another top business-getter there to leave. Most recently, Ken Yeh, its Asia chairman, departed for the Acquavella Galleries in New York.