Rockefeller University will auction off two works by Joan Mitchell, an Abstract Expressionist painter. They could sell for $32 million.
Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out why a university with endowment assets of $2.5 billion is selling two Abstract Expressionist paintings that it has owned for nearly 70 years. We’ll also get details on a twist in Mayor Eric Adams’s unusual political relationship with former President Donald Trump.
Rockefeller University in Manhattan has endowment assets of $2.5 billion and took in $777 million in a five-year fund-raising campaign that ended in June.
But it is selling two paintings by Joan Mitchell, an Abstract Expressionist artist, that it has owned for nearly 70 years. The two large canvases are expected to bring in as much as $32 million when they go on the block at Christie’s on Nov. 19.
“Science is very expensive,” the university’s president, Richard Lifton, said.
“I’m no connoisseur of art, but it did not escape our attention that Joan Mitchell’s paintings have dramatically increased in value in recent years,” he said. “We’re not a museum. We recognize it might not be great to be hanging onto works that are this valuable.”
Lifton said that the money from the paintings would go toward biomedical research — programs “that we’re eager to support better,” including artificial intelligence, “which has really taken off in terms of its potential for life science.”
