The Collection of Cable-Television Impresario Ginny Williams, Full of Top-Notch Works by Women, Could Fetch $50 Million at Sotheby’s

Some of the most anticipated collections heading to market, such
as the Macklowe Collection, are on hold amid the lockdown. But
Sotheby’s has managed to secure another high-profile get: the
collection of the late Ginny Williams, a highly respected Denver
philanthropist who made a fortune in the cable television industry
with her husband, Carl Williams.

Sotheby’s likely had to compete hard to secure the consignment,
which is expected to take in over $50 million, includes 450 pieces,
and carries a guarantee. Williams, who died last fall at the age of
92, was known for her ebullient personality, her thick Southern
accent, and her interest in the work of women artists.

Although the collection will be sold across a series of sales
over the course of the year, a selection of highlights will
comprise a single-owner sale to kick off Sotheby’s main
contemporary evening offering on June 29. (It remains unclear
whether Sotheby’s will be able to hold a live auction in New York
with collectors in attendance, although the house has said it plans
to do so pending the lifting of lockdown restrictions.)

Highlights of the Williams collection at the evening sale
include works by Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, Agnes
Martin, Joan Mitchell, and Lee Krasner, all expected to fetch
prices in the seven figures. Notably, all five women have seen new
auction records set for their work sometime in the past four years,
a sign of a market slowly recalibrating the long undervalued work
of women artists.

The likely star is Mitchell’s abstract expressionist
Straw (1976) which is estimated at $5 million to $7
million. The current record for Mitchell at auction stands at $16.6
million for Blueberry (1969), which had also been
estimated at $5 million to $7 million but soared to more than
double the high estimate when it was offered for sale at Christie’s
New York in November 2018, underscoring the growing demand for her
work. (Another major Mitchell—Noël (1961–62)—is expected
to fetch as much as $12.5 million at Phillips in July.)

Other top lots include Lee Krasner’s Re-Echo (1957),
which is estimated at $4 million to $6 million and does not appear
to ever have been offered at auction before. Helen Frankenthaler’s
Royal Fireworks (1975), a burnt orange canvas, carries an
estimate of $2 million to $3 million, as does Agnes Martin’s
Mountain Flowers I (1985). And a Louise Bourgeois bronze
sculpture, Observer (1947–49) is expected to realize $1.5
million to $2 million.

Williams, who was born in rural Virginia in 1927, was often
described as a larger-than-life presence. In addition to her
interest in contemporary art, she was also an avid photography
collector and a photographer herself. (She studied
with Austrian-American photojournalist and photographer Ernst
Haas.) She also served on the boards of the Guggenheim Museum and
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. before
she relocating to Denver in the late 1950s, where she was a staunch
supporter and donor to the Denver Art Museum.

In Denver, she opened the Ginny
Williams Gallery in the 1980s. (The gallery is now home to the
Ginny Williams Family Foundation, which was originally intended to
become a museum, though that goal was never realized, according to
Westworld.) By the time of her death, she had
assembled the largest collection of works by Bourgeois in private
hands.

Additional auctions will be dedicated to photographs from her
collection in mid-July, including work by Diane Arbus, Dorothea
Lange, and Tina Modotti, as well as lower-priced contemporary works
in the auction house’s upcoming day sale.

The post The Collection of Cable-Television Impresario Ginny
Williams, Full of Top-Notch Works by Women, Could Fetch $50 Million
at Sotheby’s appeared first on artnet News.