Thomas Eakins Charles Deas A Broader Vision for Denver Auction Action: 1989–1998 No Green Shoots at American Auctions in New York Two Hirshhorn Works By Eakins Net $461,000 at Christie’s Hirshhorn to Deaccession Nine Works, Including Three By Eakins AAMD Lets Denver’s Partial Deaccession Slide

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To acquire Cowboy Singing, estimated in the $8 to $10 million range, the museum struck a deal with Denver collector and billionaire Philip Anschutz, in which he received 50 percent ownership of both the Eakins work and another major work already in the museum's collection — Charles Deas's Long Jakes (The Rocky Mountain Man) — in return for a financial donation. The two works will rotate between the museum and the Anschutz collection every six months.

Two committees of the AAMD are looking into whether the deal — particularly Anschutz's part ownership in the Deas work — violates any of the organization's guidelines.

Lewis Sharp, the museum's director, said he believes the museum did nothing unethical. "I feel completely confident and comfortable with the way I conducted myself and the way the collections committee and the board of the Denver Art Museum (conducted themselves)," he said. "We vetted it all the way through with all the right questions, and it was unanimously approved by everybody."