In the Air

Galerie Steinitz, Paris

New home for the second outpost of the legendary Galerie Steinitz.

November 2009 Datebook

Bucking Convention

Miles of Aisles

My Brilliant Career: Lynda Benglis

Movers & Shakers

Remembrance of Things Past

Christopher Brown

Unfamiliar Territory

Conversation With RoseLee Goldberg

A Man of Many Stripes

Shattering Stereotypes

Rock Solid

Secret Stash

Good Times

Elevating Iron

Also This Month

Arman Roy Lichtenstein Jeff Koons LACMA’s Big Endowment Drop May Derail Koons Train Crazy for Koons Dealer Holly Solomon’s Papers Headed to Smithsonian Phillips de Pury Makes Its (Small) Mark The Appendix: New Museum Scandal Edition

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A year ago, just after he presided over a bankruptcy that helped push the world economy into free fall, former Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard Fuld sold 16 works from his personal collection at the Christie’s postwar and contemporary sale. Now it’s the art that graced the walls of the investment bank’s New York, Boston and Wilmington offices that’s hitting the auction block, at Freeman’s of Philadelphia. Lehman, whose Chapter 11 filing in September 2008 was the largest ever in the U.S., won permission last December to sell its collection to pay off creditors.

The works are split among three sales, whose highlights will include an elegant 2003 rolled- and welded-steel sculpture, by the French artist Bernar Venet (est. $20-30,000), a 1997 print, by Louise Bourgeoise (est. $1,000-1,500) and a splashy 1982 Roy Lichtenstein screen print, of the Statue of Liberty (est. $15-25,000). An unattributed 1959 lithograph of the New York Stock Exchange has a perhaps appropriately bargain-basement estimate of $500 to $700.

Despite the firm’s infamous end, as a provenance it has proved a powerful plus. "Because of Lehman’s historical stature, people expect the art to be top caliber," says Freeman’s cohead of modern and contemporary art, Anne Henry. "And the collection does reflect that." In the end, the art may turn out to have been a better investment than, say, mortgages.

A Real Estate

Benjamin Steinitz could be on the deluxe French version of House Hunters: Long coveting a 19th-century maison particulier on the tony Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Steinitz, upon discovering a client had purchased the building, leased it. Now the four-floor manse serves as a glitzy new home for the second outpost of the legendary Galerie Steinitz, and the 13,000-square-foot space, is flush with period boiseries, Boulle and 18th-century Chinese wallpaper. Steinitz, 39, says that this recession-era real estate coup is typical of his approach: "When you have a passion, you can’t stop to think it over." Never short on brio in his displays for events from the Winter Antiques Show to TEFAF Maastricht, Steinitz launched his new space with two pairs of Jeff Koons porcelain Scotties atop two Louis XV commodes, a César collage above a Bugatti desk and an Arman painting next to an exotic Japanese cabinet. Now that’s a house warming.

"In the Air" originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's November 2009 Table of Contents.