Artists ranging from Mickalene Thomas to Tammy Nguyen are banding together to sell more than $1 million in art at Sotheby’s next month, with all the funds going toward Yale University’s MFA art program, among the most esteemed ones of its kind in the country. All of the works will appear in a contemporary art day sale during the marquee auctions.
The most expensive piece of the bunch, a 2005 Richard Prince photograph of a clothed, adult Brooke Shields from his “Spiritual America” series, has a $500,000–$700,000 estimate. That may be a fraction of Prince’s $9.7 million auction record, but if the photograph sells at the low end of its estimate, the intake could still be enough to pay the tuition for 10 MFA students for one year. The Prince piece comes to auction from a committee that includes Yvonne Force and Leo Villareal, Iwan and Manuela Wirth, Esther Kim, Carol LeWitt, Linda Macklowe, Yana Peel, Komal Shah, and Thomas.
Speaking by phone with ARTnews, Kymberly Pinder, the dean of the Yale School of Art, said she was hoping to raise somewhere between $1 million and $2 million through the Sotheby’s sale. “It will definitely increase how much I can give to students who are in need,” she said.
When she was hired in June 2021, Pinder set out to find a way to wipe the cost of tuition for Yale’s MFA art program, as the university’s graduate music program would do that month through a $150 million donation from David Geffen. “The word ‘ethical’ came into my head,” Pinder said. “I was like, ‘This is just not ethical.’ It should be an ethical MFA. People are giving so much time and resources toward something for two years that it shouldn’t be a punishment when they leave. They shouldn’t be saddled with so much debt.”
Annual tuition for the Yale School of Art currently stands at just under $50,200—a tough barrier to clear for most aspiring artists looking to attend a program that still acts as a feeder for many New York institutions and galleries. In order to pay that price, artists often take out large loans. This led artist Josh Kline to remark, in a recent essay for October, that the Yale School of Art is “powered by student debt,” just like many other university-run programs of its kind.
Pinder said she had already raised $11 million toward meeting her goal for making tuition for Yale’s graduate art program free, though she declined to state an exact number, saying that the economic and political climate had shifted it since she began the initiative. Still, she said, “we’re pretty far from making the school completely tuition-free.”
The works headed to Sotheby’s include an array of works by Yale alumni. Some of those alumni are historical—for example, Walker Evans and Josef Albers. Others, however, are more recent: Dominic Chambers is sending a painting of the artist Shikeith with a $40,000–$60,000 price tag, while Thomas has a glittery painting of the dancer Josephine Baker pegged at $250,000–$300,000. Also included are works by Elaine Reichek, Barkley L. Hendricks, and Howardena Pindell.
Do Ho Suh, Staircases, 2019.
Courtesy Sotheby’s
Do Ho Suh, a Yale MFA alum who will have a Tate Modern survey this summer, donated $200,000–$300,000 work on paper composed of thread arranged to form staircases. Suh described consigning the piece as a natural extension of his longtime support of the Yale School of Art. “I started to make small donations as soon as I graduated, because I wanted to give something back to the school, even though I was struggling young artist,” he said in a phone conversation.
The Korean-born artist said he loved his time at Yale, but because he was born abroad, he struggled. “Because of all the expenses, it was very difficult for me—I couldn’t have any financial aid because the grants were only for Americans,” he said. “So, it was really challenging. And my understanding is it’s getting harder. That’s one of the reasons I decided to donate this work, to support young talent.”
