Save the Art – Save the Museum to hold protest at Sotheby’s headquarters
New York City — The Berkshire County, Massachusetts-based citizens’ group Save the Art – Save the Museum will stage a protest outside Sotheby’s auction house at 1334 York Ave. Wednesday, May 23, from 9 to 10 a.m. The group opposes the Berkshire Museum’s deaccession of 40 artworks donated to the community and entrusted to the museum, now on the block at Sotheby’s. Save the Art will be calling attention to the impact this precedent will have on collections of art and artifacts in the public trust held by museums, libraries, and historical societies beyond Massachusetts.
This protest follows a May 14 demonstration that took place at Sotheby’s before the first auction in a series through which the museum hopes to raise $55 million to fund a $40 million endowment and a change to a science-oriented mission. At least 20 supporters from the Berkshires and the New York metropolitan area gathered in front of the auction house with bold red posters bearing slogans intended to inform the public about issues surrounding the sale of the artworks.
Wednesday’s demonstration will occur just prior to Sotheby’s American art sale at 10 a.m., in which the last four of the initial 13 works of art removed from the Berkshire Museum’s collection will hit the block. These 13 works form the first of three tranches that include 39 of the 40 deaccessioned artworks. One painting, “Shuffleton’s Barbershop” by Norman Rockwell was sold in advance of the auctions for an undisclosed sum to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which under construction in Los Angeles. On May 14, works by Henry Moore and Francis Picabia were sold at auction, followed May 16 by a sculpture by Alexander Calder. The Tuesday, May 22, auction offered five works in the European and Old Master paintings categories, including paintings by Bouguereau, Pasini and Isenbrandt. In Wednesday’s auction, “Blacksmith’s Boy – Heel and Toe,” another painting by Rockwell, will be auctioned along with a major landscape by Hudson River School painter Frederic Church, a portrait of George Washington by Rembrandt Peale and a still life by John LaFarge.
