Collectors Sherry and Joel Mallin are selling around 1,000 artworks they’ve bought over the decades. Their holdings will be sold starting later this year at Sotheby’s, where they are expected to fetch a collective sum in excess of $50 million.
Their collection is expected to be one of the largest grouping of artworks from a single owner ever to come to auction. Still, the collection as a whole is much lower in value than other, smaller groupings of artworks from single owners like the Macklowes and David Rockefeller.
The Mallins’ works will be sold across a series of auctions that will take place in London and New York this year. Additional sales, including one devoted to large-scale sculptures, will be held in 2023, Sotheby’s said.
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The move follows the couple’s recent decision to list their $8.5 million Buckhorn Sculpture Park, located at Pound Ridge in New York, on the market. The estate has long served as a private exhibition space for their collection, which they accumulated over the course of several decades.
The Mallins, who from 2004 to 2014 ranked on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, tapped former auction executive Francis Outred to advise on the distribution of the pair’s art holdings. Christie’s also competed for their collection.
The first group of works are scheduled to be sold during contemporary art sales at Sotheby’s in London this month. Highlights include Thomas Schütte’s 2002 sculpture Bronzefrau Nr.11 (Bronze Woman No. 11), which is expected to sell for £2 million–£3 million ($2.3 million–$3.4 million). It will be offered during a live sale on on October 14.
An untitled sculpture by Robert Gober from 1993–94, which carries an estimate of $6 million–$8 million will be offered in a marquee contemporary art sale in New York. Alongside that piece will be a sculpture by Robert Irwin from 1965–67 that derives from his series “The Discs.” It carries an estimate of $3 million–$4 million.
Other top lots include a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Net painting from 2010, Sean Scully’s 1998 painting Wall of Light Red, and Louise Bourgeois’s 1981 sculpture Listening One. Those works will be offered at estimates ranging between £1.1 million and £2.5 million ($1.2 million and $2.8 million). A collection of works by figures like Damien Hirst and Ron Mueck will also be sold.