In recent art world news, a Norman Rockwell painting titled “Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe” (1940) from the Berkshire Museum’s collection sold for $7 million (with buyer’s premium added, the figure is about 8.13 million) to a telephone bidder last week at Sotheby’s in New York. This was the highest price fetched by the museum as part of a sell off of 13 works over the past few weeks at Sotheby’s. Additional works sold include a Francis Picabia watercolor painting and an Alexander Calder mobile that came in at a below estimate of $1 million last week.
Following the recent offering of 13 artworks at auction (notably, two of which failed to sell, including a Frederic Edwin Church with an estimate of $5 million to $7 million) and a private deal involving the purchase of Rockwell’s “Shuffleton’s Barbershop” (1950) for an undisclosed amount by the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the Berkshire Museum has brought in $42 million just $13 million short of the $55 million goal “it has hoped to raise in an effort to build an endowment and close a budget deficit that its leadership has said risks shuttering the museum in coming years.”
The total fetched for the 11 lots that recently sold at auction was about $12.7 million (without buyer’s premium). It can be determined from the $42 million total sales to date that the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art likely paid around $29.3 million for Shuffleton’s Barbershop, which was previously tagged by Sotheby’s with a $30 million high estimate. It is unknown as to whether the museum is receiving a portion of the buyer’s premium paid on auctioned lots—such practice is known as “enhanced hammer”. If it is, the price paid for Shuffleton’s Barbershop by the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art was likely less. Sotheby’s has reportedly waived the seller’s fees for the Berkshire Museum.
Pursuant to the terms of the agreement between the museum and the Massachusetts Attorney General and approved by Massachusetts’s highest court in April, the Berkshire Museum has the option of selling up to 40 works in three separate portions to reach $55 million. With last week’s sale of 11 lots, this means that 26 additional works could still be sold and the two works that passed could be up for auction again.
It will be interesting to see if the museum is able to reach its $55 million goal with the sale of a portion of the remaining works. For our recent coverage of the Berkshire Museum on the Art Law blog, click here.