Miss Porter’s School, Sotheby’s to present women artist benefit auction

Miss Porter’s School

Mill Porter’s School, Farmington, Connecticut. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

NEW YORK – Miss Porter’s School, a leading, all-girls private high school, has announced plans for a fundraising initiative, gathering modern and contemporary artworks by more than 25 pioneering female artists to be sold together as the centerpiece of Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated auction on March 1. The offering will represent the first-ever all-women benefit auction at a major auction house.

Following the presale exhibition opening in Sotheby’s New York galleries on Feb. 22, the works will be auctioned to support financial aid that enables emerging female leaders to attend Miss Porter’s School. Details on individual works and a full list of artists will be released in early 2019.

Agnes Gund and Oprah Winfrey, longtime supporters of Miss Porter’s School, will serve as honorary co-chairs. A Miss Porter’s alumna, Agnes Gund ’56 is one of the most important patrons of the arts in America and exemplary in her support of women artists. Winfrey is a strong believer in the power of a single-sex education for girls and is the founder of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (OWLAG) in South Africa. The OWLAG Board is chaired by Miss Porter’s Head of School Dr. Katherine Windsor.

Works by more than 25 artists are being donated to the auction, including a major abstract painting by Carmen Herrera, Blanco y Verde of 1966-67 – the most important work by the artist ever to appear at auction. From her breakthrough series of the same name, the painting was recently exhibited in a retrospective of her work, “Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Pieces by the following artists will also be on offer, representing a diverse selection of some of the most innovative artists of the past century, including Ghada Amer, Alice Aycock, Cecily Brown, Mariana Cook, Jay DeFeo, Liz Glynn, Katharina Grosse, Jane Hammond, Carmen Herrera, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Chantal Joffe, Louise Lawler, Vera Lutter, Beatriz Milhazes, Mariko Mori, Sarah Morris, Catherine Opie, Dorothea Rockburne, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Cindy Sherman, Jean Shin, Kiki Smith and Carrie Mae Weems.

Founded in 1843, Miss Porter’s School is an all-girls private college preparatory school in Farmington, Connecticut. By merging tradition with innovation and creating new generations of bold, informed leaders, Miss Porter’s School is positioned to be the school of consequence for girls and women at a time when the voices of our girls need to be amplified. Each year, the school educates more than 300 boarding and day students, and provides more than $4M in need-based financial aid support.

Miss Porter’s achieves the highest standard of education for female students and builds strong relationships between students, faculty and alumnae, thus creating new generations of educated and connected women. To further emphasize the school’s commitment to the arts and focus on experiential learning, advanced students in Miss Porter’s art history program will collaborate directly with Sotheby’s and assist in preparing the auction catalog.

For more information on the auction and ways to participate, visit https://www.sothebys.com. For more information on Miss Porter’s School, visit https://www.porters.org.