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Trio of gallery greats commence sales of works from the Donald B. Marron Family Collection

Good contemporary art reflects the society, and great contemporary art anticipates.

Donald B. Marron (quoted by Pace Gallery, “Acquavella Galleries, Gagosian and Pace to Handle Sale of Donald B. MarronFamily Collection”)

Kelly Crow of the Wall Street Journal has reported that two works by Pablo Picasso, “Femme au beret et la collerette” (Woman with Beret and Collar,” 1937) and “Seated Woman (Jacqueline)” (1962) have been sold from the Donald B. Marron Family Collection to collector Stephen Wynn. It is reported that Mr. Wynn paid approximately $105 million for the two paintings.

Sales of works from the family collection are being conducted by a collaboration of gallery greats – Pace Gallery, Gagosian, and Acquavella Galleries. Bill Acquavella (son of Acquavella Galleries founder Nicholas Acquavella), Larry Gagosian (founder of Gagosian), and Arne Glimcher (founder of Pace Gallery) each worked with Mr. Marron in the development of the collection.

The collaboration, “the first of its kind, signals a new way for families to handle the sales of their collections” (Gagosian).

Under the terms of the collaboration, the galleries are charged to work jointly and privately to place and sell the works in the market. They are charged, further, neither to disclose publicly what is or is not available for sale nor to disclose an estimate for the collection.

The collaboration appears to have been the brainchild of Marc Glimcher, son of Arne Glimcher and president of Pace Gallery.

Eileen Kinsella of Artnet News, reporting that the plan came together quickly, quotes Mr. Glimcher:

“’I heard that [the Marron family] were considering going to auction and I just picked up the phone and called Larry [Gagosian] and said, ‘We should really present an alternative to the family. It’s tragic for this collection to go to auction,’” Glimcher recalled.

“After reaching out to Bill Acquavella, who also had a longstanding relationship with Marron, “’we all came and presented an idea to the family of how we would do it” around a month ago.’”

The Acquavella family – sister, brothers, and father – came on board. Eleanor Acquavella, Bill Acquavella’s daughter, reports that they“’ liked the idea of competing with the auctions on a great estate.’” They acknowledged, however, that “it would be hard to pull off.'” The galleries would be required to “’compete financially,'” and otherwise, to win to the business.

Indeed. Financial guarantees for the collection, in the amount of $300 million, had been offered by auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips.

Especially in the face of those guarantees, “’“the key,’” observed Gagosian’s COO Andrew Fabricant, “’was to meet the fiduciary requirements of an estate, which is complicated.

“‘We had to convince the family and the lawyers. The challenge was to be in line and competitive and still have some daylight for running with an exhibition and sales.”

A joint New York exhibition of May and June, is being organized by the three galleries. Including works from the family collection together with loans from institutions,  the exhibition “will chronicle Marron’s collecting activities, including his early acquisitions in the 1960s and 1970s, his museum stewardship, and his pioneering work reinventing how corporations build art collections around a singular vision.”

See:

Kelly Crow, “Steve Wynn Pays $105 Million for Pair of Picassos,” The Wall Street Journal, 24 February 2020

Eileen Kinsella, “The $450 Million Marron Collection Is the Art Market’s Ultimate Prize. Now, Three of the World’s Top Rival Galleries Are Joining Forces to Sell It,” Artnet, 19 February 2020

“Acquavella Galleries, Gagosian, and Pace to Handle Sale of Donald B. MarronFamily Collection,” Gagosian

“Acquavella Galleries, Gagosian and Pace to Handle Sale of Donald B. Marron Family Collection,” Pace Gallery

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Pace, Gagosian, and Acquavella selected to sell – jointly and privately – works from the Donald B. Marron Family Collection

Three galleries – Pace, Gagosian, and Acquavella – have been selected to sell, jointly and privately, works from the Donald B. Marron Family Collection. The arrangement was agreed on 18 February by Donald Marron’s widow, Catherine. The galleries expect the majority of the works to be placed with new owners, representing great collections, this spring.

Works from the Marron collection will be exhibited from April 24 to May 16 at Pace and Gagosian in Chelsea (New York). The timing, not coincidentally, coincides with Tefaf New York Spring and Frieze New York.

 Works to be exhibited include Pablo Picasso’s “Femme au beret et la collerette” (“Woman With Beret and Collar,” 1937; already sold) and Mark Rothko’s “Number 22 (Reds)” (1957). Select works will be loaned from institutions to highlight those from the Marron family collection.

Asking prices will be publicized only for works that remain unsold by the time of the exhibition.

Observes Marc Glimcher, president of Pace, “One of the responsibilities of our galleries—and we represent many or most of the artists that are in the collection—is to see that these works move from one great collection to another.”

Donald B. Marron passed away on 6 December 2019 at the age of 85. He had served as President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of PaineWebber. While at PaineWebber he helped initiate the company’s corporate art collection. PaineWebber, founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1880, was acquired by Swiss banking giant (and sponsor of Art Basel) UBS in 2000. From 1985 to 1991 Mr. Marron served as president of the board of trustees of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Over the course of decades a collection of approximately 300 works, with a reported worth of upwards of $450 million, was assembled. The collection includes paintings by Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Cy Tombly, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, Brice Marden, Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly, and Gerhard Richter amongst others.

Reflects Pace’s Marc Glimcher, “All three galleries were very close to Don, and all participated in building that collection with him.”

Eleanor Acquavella told Artnet News that “when Marc called, I really liked the idea of competing with the auctions on a great estate. My father and brothers and I talked about it and thought it would be hard to pull off. … We certainly had to compete financially and otherwise.”

Said Andrew Fabricant, COO of Gagosian, “The key was to meet the fiduciary requirements of an estate, which is complicated. We had to convince the family and the lawyers. The challenge was to be in line and competitive and still have some daylight for running with an exhibition and sales.”

Sales have commenced. Kelly Crow of The Wall Street Journal reports that billionaire former casino-resort magnate Steve Wynn, who appears on ARTnews‘ list of Top 200 Collectors, has paid around $105 million for two paintings by Pablo Picasso, “Woman with Beret and Collar” (1937) and “Seated Woman (Jacqueline)” (1962).

See:

Eileen Kinsella, “The $450 Million Marron Collection Is the Art Market’s Ultimate Prize.Now, Three of the World’s Top Rival Galleries Are Joining Forces to Sell It,” Artnet, 19 February 2020

Tim Schneider, “The Gray Market: Why History Equipped the Mega-Dealers to Win the $450 Million Marron Estate (and Other Insights),” Artnet News, 24 February 2020

Margaret Carrigan, “Donald B. Marron’s $450m collection to be sold by Acquavella, Gagosian and Pace galleries in New York,” The Art Newspaper, 19 February 2020

KellyCrow, “SteveWynn Pays $105 Million for Pair of Picassos,” The Wall StreetJournal,  24 February 2020

Tessa Solomon, “Embattled Billionaire Collector Stephen Wynn Buys Two Picassos From the Marron Estate for $105 M.: Report,” ArtNews, 24 February 2020

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Dan Colen

Dan Colen’s “TBT” (chewing gum and gum wrappers on canvas, in artist’s frame, 2008) sold at the Phillips Auction New York Contemporary Art Day sale of 17 May 2013 for $305,000.

Born in Leonia, New Jersey in 1979 and a 2001 BFA graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Dan Colen has long questioned the “editorial decisions artists have to make when creating a scene from scratch on canvas.”

Stepping away from paint as a medium in 2006, Colen started using chewing gum. In 2008 he wrote, “When I first started, the canvases were very sparse … It slowly developed into a more elaborate and involved process. I started adding a lot more gum to each canvas; I would put pieces down, pick them up again, move ’em around, stretch them out, mush ’em together, and mix flavors to create new colors”.

Dan Colen creates his work in a variety of media – painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation – from a variety of materials including gum, dirt, grass, tar, feathers, and street trash from the street.

He examines cultural mythologies and archetypes, the boundaries between “high” and “low” art, and the artist’s measure of “control” over the behavior of a given material.

Dan Colen’s recent “Purgatory” (2017) is a work of strong imagination and probing. On view at New York’s Lévy Gorvy Gallery, that now collaborates with Gagosian and Massimo De Carlo to represent Mr. Colen, stylistically it is as if by another artist entirely. Oil on canvas in deep reds and black, the painting draws the viewer frighteningly in along a diagonal through a tunnel of dark clouds back towards a receding glow.

Mr. Colen’s works are in a number of public and private collections including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery,  LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet, Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the Dakis Joannou Collection in Athens, Miami’s de la Cruz Collection, and Puerto Rico’s Jiménez-Colón Collection.

 

See:

Dan Colen, “TBT,” 2008, Phillips Contemporary Art Day, New York, 17 May 2013, Lot 125

Dan Colen, Gagosian

Dan Colen, Lévy Gorvy

“Lévy Gorvy to Represent Dan Colen in Collaboration with Gagosian, Massimo De Carlo,” Sarah Douglas, ArtNews, 31 May 2017