Picasso and Warhol items previously owned by UArts go under the hammer
Freeman's | Hindman has sold books and materials from the shuttered school for more than $160,000. There are more items the auction house is readying for a future sale.
Following the University of the Arts’ abrupt closure in June 2024, several of the school’s properties and assets have found new owners and homes.
Among them is part of a collection of rare prints and books, which was acquired by the Philadelphia appraisal firm Freeman’s | Hindman.
As with most consignments, Darren Winston, senior vice president at Freeman’s, said the UArts materials arrived at the auction house by way of “word of mouth and relationships” formed by the two institutions over the years.
Earlier this month, Freeman’s | Hindman sold 38 books, portfolios, manuscripts, and other arts materials from the school’s special and rare books collection library to private collectors for $163,328.
The auction lot includes a Pablo Picasso-signed first edition of Picasso, an early biography of the famed artist by collector and author Andre Level.
The trove also includes a first edition of Josef Albers’ artist portfolio Die Oberflache, featuring signed, dated, and titled geometric abstracts. It’s one of only 120 copies in the world.
Then there are artist books by Ann Kalmbach and Tatana Kellner (My 9 Migraine Cures) and by Swiss visionary Dieter Roth, and an initialed copy of Andy Warhol’s autobiography, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol.
The lots, Winston said, isn’t all of Freeman’s UArts collection.
“The things we sold at [the Sept. 10] auction were the most valuable,” Winston said. “We sold those first, and the others we’ll be offering in the future.”
The auction marked another step in the deaccession of the once-prominent arts college.
In March, a court order authorized the school’s bankruptcy trustee, Alfred T. Giuliano, to “abandon, and/or recycle, and/or dispose of any records” that the trustee determines are unnecessary to the estates, or are “cost-prohibitive to store.”
As reported last year, the school’s debt totals $67 million.
“The usual reason why the representative of a bankruptcy estate sells assets is to raise money to pay debt. The estate of UArts cannot lawfully give assets away if there is unpaid debt outstanding,” said Dilworth Paxson lawyer Lawrence McMichael, a specialist in bankruptcy of cultural organizations, who is unconnected to the UArts case.
Earlier this week, a collection of UArts archival materials that “could hold close to a million records” became a part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania collection without any money being exchanged between the parties.
There are limited bases in the bankruptcy code that allow trustees to abandon assets, McMichael said. It’s most common when assets have no value, the cost of selling them exceeds their value, or the asset is riddled with liabilities.
The collection, which spans 870 linear feet, is the largest at HSP. It includes student portfolios, graduate theses, artwork, rare photographs, and architectural renderings.
In July, the last of the nine Center City buildings owned by UArts was sold.
Kensington’s Thunderbird Salvage hosted a sale in August, offering items left behind at UArts’ Anderson Hall. Items belonging to former students were promised to be returned free of cost.
The UArts bankruptcy trustee didn’t respond to interview requests at the time of publishing.
To view the Freeman’s auction results, visit hindmanauctions.com.