Art that once belonged to the late Boston collector Gerald Fineberg is set to fetch more than $270 million at Christie’s New York, with a two-part standalone auction scheduled for May to tout works by artists from Man Ray to Christopher Wool .
Fineberg, who went by the name Jerry, was a Boston real estate magnate and hotelier who died last December after amassing an extensive collection of 20th-century art. “Jerry was a collector who thought like a curator,” Sara Friedlander, Christie’s vice president for postwar and contemporary art, said in a statement. “When he got into a new movement or artist, he really went a long way. That’s what makes this collection so unique and special.
by Gerhard Richter Badende (1967) Courtesy of Christie’s
In May, about 220 works from Fineberg’s collection will be sold in an evening sale and a daytime sale, according to Christie’s. Additional works from his collection will be part of subsequent sales, Christie’s said. In total, his collection is expected to fetch around $270 million.
Fineberg’s collection spans a century of art, beginning with a painting by Man Ray of Kiki de Montparnasse, which was also the subject of the artist’s famous photograph. The Violin of Ingres (1924). The painting, Portrait of Kiki (1923), is expected to gross up to $1.5 million.
An untitled text painting by Christopher Wool from 1993 Courtesy of Christie’s
Highlights from the May sale include Gerhard Richter’s Badende (1967) and an untitled 1993 text painting by Christopher Wool that reads “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke”, both of which are estimated to sell for $15–20 million. by Pablo Picasso Bust of a laureate man (1969) could gross up to $12 million. The sale also features works by Joan Mitchell, Alex Katz, Alice Neel and Willem de Kooning.
Fineberg’s collection was diverse and included works by a number of women artists and painters of color, Christie’s noted. by Barkley Hendricks Stanley (1971), a life-size portrait by another artist Stanley Whitneywas painted while Hendricks was still a student at Yale University, where the two men met and became friends. The painting is estimated at $7 million.
by Barkley Hendricks Stanley (1971) is one of the paintings formerly owned by Gerald Fineberg to be auctioned in May Courtesy of Christie’s
Prior to his death, Fineberg served on the boards of art institutions in Massachusetts, including the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, where works by contemporary artists are installed on the Gerald and Sandra Fineberg Art Wall.
In 2021, a union made up of tenants of properties owned and managed by Fineberg’s company held a rally and pop-up display outside the ICA to protest the evictions and what they described as squalid living conditions.
