Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

Los Angeles….

This year, Los Angeles lost three of its major art collectors within two months: actor Dennis Hopper, gallery director Robert Shapazian, and computer pioneer Max Palevsky. Los Angeles may lose the bulk of their collections, since Christie’s is selling 350 artworks from their estates, beginning this week.

The collection of works is expected to bring close to $100 million.

The artworks will likely be dispersed both across the U.S. and worldwide. Prized pieces that are scheduled for the contemporary sale on November 10 include:

“…a 1987 Basquiat painting owned by Hopper, which the auction house estimated will sell for $5 million to $7 million; Roy Lichtenstein’s 1964 “Girl in Mirror” from Palevsky, estimated at $3 million to $4 million; and Andy Warhol’s 1962 “Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato)” from Shapazian, estimated at $6 million to $8 million.”

Museums are not celebrating, because the artwork has just been packed up and shipped out of Los Angeles, perhaps never to return. Every work that is going to auction is a work that has not been donated to a regional museum.

“The Shapazian grouping consists of 69 works, rich in Duchamp and Warhol, estimated altogether at $22 million to $31 million. The Hopper estate, led by a 1987 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting estimated at $5 million to $7 million, has 35 lots expected to realize $9 million to $13 million. The Palevsky material has the greatest range: from antiquities to 20th century decorative arts, and from an Egon Schiele nude to a Roy Lichtenstein blond. All told, the Palevsky group is made up of more than 250 works expected, over multiple sales, to realize $53 million to $78 million.”

Two examples of work that will not be donated are:

“… from the Palevsky collection: A 1980 Donald Judd stainless-steel-and-aluminum stack sculpture did not go the L.A. County Museum of Art, where Palevsky was a longtime supporter. Christie’s estimates it will bring $1.8 million to $2.5 million in its Nov.10 evening sale.”

“Or, from the Hopper material, Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made “Hotel Green (Entrance)” from 1963, which appeared in MOCA’s “Dennis Hopper Double Standard” show this summer, has not been gifted to the museum. Next month, it goes on the block at Christie’s with a $40,000 to $60,000 estimate.”

Deborah McLeod, director of Gagosian Beverly Hills, calls the exodus of artwork “a failure of our culture.”

“Unlike the East Coast, where a number of big families have the tradition of giving,” she says, “there just isn’t an ingrained philanthropic culture of supporting museums here in Los Angeles. You’ve heard people say we’re a one-philanthropist town, with Eli Broad, and that’s not so far off.”

And yet, this article details the competitive advantage of Christie’s over its rival Southeby’s, the fears that donations to museums could be held in storage rather than displayed on walls, the differences in each estate, including the histories of donations to museums BEFORE the deaths of the collectors.

Yes, the fate of art, even after the death of the collector, is complicated.

-Bill at

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