Whitney Museum deaccessioning is in focus as New York’s Whitney Museum plans to sell a Willem de Kooning painting at Christie’s next week, three years after the institution formally received the work as a gift from the family of a former museum president.
Yellow River (1958), a large abstract canvas with sweeping passages of blue and yellow, carries an estimate of 12 million to 18 million dollars and is slated for Christie’s 20th century evening sale on November 17. The museum is selling the work to benefit its collection, according to the auction house’s catalog.
Yellow River was acquired in 1959 from Sidney Janis Gallery by David M. Solinger, a lawyer and collector who became the Whitney’s first president from outside the Whitney family in 1966. Christie’s notes that Solinger prized the painting, hanging it for a time at the foot of his bed so he could see it each morning.
After Solinger’s death in 1996, the painting went to his wife, Betty Ann Besch Solinger, who promised it to the Whitney in 2011. It was shown at the museum that year, and the gift was completed in 2023 following her death in 2022. The work is now returning to the market.
Whitney Museum deaccessioning as a strategic tool
This sale follows other recent Whitney deaccessions. In 2023, the museum consigned a group of paintings by Edward Hopper, Maurice Prendergast, John Marin, and others to Sotheby’s, led by Hopper’s Cobb’s Barns, South Truro (1930–33) with an estimate of 8 million to 12 million dollars.
At the time, Jane Panetta, then the Whitney’s curator and director of the collection, said the sales supported a broader plan to expand and diversify the museum’s holdings. She said the collection must evolve to represent the United States more accurately, and that endowment funds for acquisitions help address critical gaps.
The Whitney’s 2023 Collection Strategic Plan recommended making deaccessioning a more regular aspect of its collecting approach, especially in areas where the museum already has significant depth. The institution continues to hold key works by de Kooning, including Door to the River (1960), which is from the same period as Yellow River.
Created in 1958, Yellow River is associated with a pivotal phase in de Kooning’s practice as he shifted away from the figures of his well-known “Woman” series toward more abstract compositions influenced in part by New York’s landscape and highways. The painting appeared in his 1959 show at Sidney Janis Gallery, where, according to Christie’s, 19 of the 22 works had sold by noon on the opening day.
Deaccessioning remains a sensitive issue in the museum field. The Association of Art Museum Directors permits proceeds from such sales to be used for acquiring new works or for direct care of collections. The Whitney’s collections policy states that works are intended to remain in the collection permanently, while allowing sales that improve or refine the holdings.
The sale and strategic plan arrive as debates continue over money, art, and institutional responsibility, echoing broader conversations about inequality and representation explored in Mona Chalabi interview explores money, art, and inequality.