Billionaire Tisch Family to Sell Art After Matriarch's Death
Billionaire Tisch Family to Sell Art After Matriarch's Death
(Bloomberg) -- An art trove of the late billionaire couple Joan and Preston Robert Tisch may fetch more than $80 million at Christie’s, the latest big-name collection the auction house secured for its high-stakes May sales.
The auction market rebounded in 2017 after a two-year slump. Sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips reached $11.2 billion, up 25 percent from 2016, according to research firm ArtTactic. The bellwether New York auctions in May will be the first major test in 2018 of the market’s high end.
Christie’s will offer 40 modern artworks from the family that co-founded Loews Corp. and co-owns the New York Giants football team. The sale will follow the highly anticipated collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller, which is estimated at more than $500 million.
The Tisch group includes a 1955 Pablo Picasso painting depicting his studio in the South of France, estimated at as much as $9 million. Willem de Kooning’s abstract “Untitled XVIII" (1976) is valued at $8 million to $12 million. Joan Miro’s 1945 “Femme entendant de la musique” has a target of $10 million to $15 million while an Alberto Giacometti bronze of several small standing figures is estimated to fetch $12 million to $18 million.
“It’s one of those great, old-school New York collections,” said Brett Gorvy, a co-founder of Levy Gorvy Gallery and a former Christie’s executive. The estimates are reasonable for the quality of the works, which is very high, he said. They’re also a fraction of the auction records for each artist (the highest price for Picasso is $179.4 million; Giacometti’s is $141.3 million; de Kooning’s is $66.3 million; and Miro’s $37.1 million).
Well-known estates are key to the auction houses because they provide fresh material at various prices and create buzz. In November, for example, Christie’s won artworks from the estate of Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass that tallied $161.3 million, surpassing the target. A Vincent Van Gogh painting from the group sold for $81.3 million, just shy of the artist’s auction record.
Going into this season, Christie’s has an edge over rival Sotheby’s because of the Rockefeller trove, the biggest estate ever by value, with masterpieces by Picasso and Henri Matisse.
Joan Tisch was 90 when she died in November. Her husband owned half of the Giants from 1991 until his death in 2005. That share is now owned by their three children: Steven Tisch, a film producer and chairman of the team; Laurie Tisch, a philanthropist who’s a trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art; and Jonathan Tisch, who runs Loews with two cousins.
Proceeds will benefit the Tisch family foundations, according to Christie’s. The family’s philanthropic footprint in Manhattan includes Tisch Hospital at NYU’s Langone Medical Center; Tisch School of the Arts at New York University; and the Tisch Children’s Zoo in Central Park.
--With assistance from Laurence Arnold
To contact the reporter on this story: Katya Kazakina in New York at kkazakina@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Mary Romano, Peter Eichenbaum
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