Windsor’s art gallery will be saying goodbye to two big-ticket pieces of art from its collection later this month — but says their sale will establish a new fund to purchase more art with local connections.
Cowley Abbott, a Toronto-based art auction house, will action two Art Windsor-Essex (AWE) pieces in late May: A Paul Kane oil painting, Party of Indians in Two Canoes on Mountain Lake, dated from the 1840s, and an Andy Warhol print of Wayne Gretzky.
“We’re in this whole process of thinking about what’s in our collection, what makes sense to hold and what might make sense to release at this moment in time,” said Jennifer Matotek, executive director of AWE.
She says the gallery recently undertook a review of the pieces in its collection to identify works to deaccession — museum-speak for sell or remove from the gallery’s collection.
The Warhol print and the Kane oil painting are two of about 100 pieces the gallery has identified to deaccession.
“Art galleries, public art galleries that hold collections in the public trust for people, there’s costs associated with it, there’s resources associated with it,” she said.
Art Windsor Essex will auction off an Andy Warhol print of Wayne Gretzky, one of two in its collection, with Toronto-based firm Cowley Abbott in May 2024. (Cowley Abbott)
“[It] doesn’t take away from their excellence, but just you know, is it something that makes sense for us to continue having in our collection?”
The gallery will have a show in April of the works it plans to deaccession. The pieces were chosen by AWE’s curatorial and executive teams, with their board and external affairs committee. Matotek says the Warhol print was actually a duplicate within AWE’s collection.
Paul Kane art collected across Canada, United States
Rob Cowley is a Canadian art specialist and the president of Cowley Abbott, the firm handling the auction.
He says the pieces have generated global interest. While their experts have estimated the value of both pieces, he says they could very well “exceed expectations” at auction.
“For collectors, this is a fantastic opportunity to own two very different, but two highly celebrated works of art by quite renowned artists,” he says.
Cowley said the Kane painting could sell for between $600,000 and $800,000, while the Warhol print — one of about 300 in existence — could go for between $15,000 and $30,000.
Paul Kane is a 19th century Canadian painter, and Party of Indians in Two Canoes on Mountain Lake is more than 180 years old. His work is featured in the National Gallery of Canada and Royal Ontario Museum.
Some of Kane’s works have sold for more than $1 million, he says, including one Kane canvas that Cowley Abbott auctioned in 2022. There’s a particularly large collection of his work in Texas.
“We have collectors for his work not only across Canada, but also into the United States,” Cowley said. “There are collections of Paul Kane’s work in the United States which can be a rarity for Canadian artists.”
With the sale at auction, Matotek says the gallery will be able to create a fund for the purchase of new art that meets their mandate of Canadian historical, Indigenous and contemporary pieces that have ties to the Windsor-Essex region.
“It will find a home where it will really be treasured and then it opens up the opportunity for us to start a dedicated fund to purchase contemporary art with, which is sometimes really difficult,” she said.
As for the Andy Warhol piece, Cowley says its no surprise there is global interest in the work given Warhol’s stature as “arguably the best known contemporary artist in the world and … the grandfather of pop art.”
Deaccessioning art ‘healthy’ process for art galleries, museums
Cowley said the firm is happy to be part of the auction, and will donate its commission fees back to the AWE endowment fund for the sale of the pieces.
More broadly, Cowley says deaccessioning has become more common for art galleries as they focus on their specific mandates and areas of expertise.
“It is quite a healthy process as well to continue, not only the growth, but also the care for the collection in these museums,” he said.
“It can make sense, and especially if it means moving into other areas and also having a fund to acquire work that very much matches the current mandate.”
The auction will be held on May 30 in Toronto, with previews in Toronto and Winnipeg earlier in May. A selection of AWE’s deaccessioned works will be on display from April 3 to May 26.
“Whether it’s our collection, whether it’s our exhibitions, whether it’s our programs, every step we take towards becoming a gallery for the 21st century, I’m excited about,” Matotek said.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
