{"id":1907331,"date":"2026-04-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1907331"},"modified":"2026-04-27T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T09:00:00","slug":"artists-sell-work-at-sothebys-to-fund-a-debt-free-yale-mfa-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1907331","title":{"rendered":"Artists Sell Work at Sotheby’s to Fund a Debt-Free Yale MFA Program"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\tArtists ranging from Mickalene Thomas to Tammy Nguyen are banding together to sell more than $1 million in art at Sotheby\u2019s next month, with all the funds going toward Yale University\u2019s MFA art program, among the most esteemed ones of its kind in the country. All of the works will appear in a contemporary art day sale during the marquee auctions. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe most expensive piece of the bunch, a 2005 Richard Prince photograph of a clothed, adult Brooke Shields from his \u201cSpiritual America\u201d series, has a $500,000\u2013$700,000 estimate. That may be a fraction of Prince\u2019s $9.7 million auction record, but if the photograph sells at the low end of its estimate, the intake could still be enough to pay the tuition for 10 MFA students for one year. The Prince piece comes to auction from a committee that includes Yvonne Force and Leo Villareal, Iwan and Manuela Wirth, Esther Kim, Carol LeWitt, Linda Macklowe, Yana Peel, Komal Shah, Thomas, Josef Vascovitz and Lisa Goodman, and Lucas Zwirner.<\/p>\n
\n\tSpeaking by phone with ARTnews<\/em>, Kymberly Pinder, the dean of the Yale School of Art, said she was hoping to raise somewhere between $1 million and $2 million through the Sotheby\u2019s sale. \u201cIt will definitely increase how much I can give to students who are in need,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen she was hired in June 2021, Pinder set out to find a way to wipe the cost of tuition for Yale\u2019s MFA art program, as the university\u2019s graduate drama program would do that month through a $150 million donation from David Geffen. \u201cThe word \u2018ethical\u2019 came into my head,\u201d Pinder said. \u201cI was like, \u2018This is just not ethical.\u2019 It should be an ethical MFA. People are giving so much time and resources toward something for two years that it shouldn\u2019t be a punishment when they leave. They shouldn\u2019t be saddled with so much debt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAnnual tuition for the Yale School of Art currently stands at just under $50,200\u2014a tough barrier to clear for most aspiring artists looking to attend a program that still acts as a feeder for many New York institutions and galleries. In order to pay that price, artists often take out large loans. This led artist Josh Kline to remark, in a recent essay for October<\/em>, that the Yale School of Art is \u201cpowered by student debt,\u201d just like many other university-run programs of its kind.<\/p>\n
\n\tPinder said she had already raised $11 million toward meeting her goal for making tuition for Yale\u2019s graduate art program free, though she declined to state an exact number, saying that the economic and political climate had shifted it since she began the initiative. Still, she said, \u201cwe\u2019re pretty far from making the school completely tuition-free.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe works headed to Sotheby\u2019s include an array of works by Yale alumni. Some of those alumni are historical\u2014for example, Walker Evans and Josef Albers. Others, however, are more recent: Dominic Chambers has a painting of the artist Shikeith with a $40,000\u2013$60,000 price tag, while Thomas has a glittery painting of the dancer Josephine Baker pegged at $250,000\u2013$300,000. Also included are works by Elaine Reichek, Barkley L. Hendricks, and Howardena Pindell.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>Do Ho Suh, Staircases<\/em>, 2019.<\/span>Courtesy Sotheby\u2019s<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n\tDo Ho Suh, a Yale MFA alum who will have a Tate Modern survey this summer, donated $200,000\u2013$300,000 work on paper composed of thread arranged to form staircases. Suh described consigning the piece as a natural extension of his longtime support of the Yale School of Art. \u201cI started to make small donations as soon as I graduated, because I wanted to give something back to the school, even though I was struggling young artist,\u201d he said in a phone conversation.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Korean-born artist said he loved his time at Yale, but because he was born abroad, he struggled. \u201cBecause of all the expenses, it was very difficult for me\u2014I couldn\u2019t have any financial aid because the grants were only for Americans,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, it was really challenging. And my understanding is it\u2019s getting harder. That\u2019s one of the reasons I decided to donate this work, to support young talent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Barkley-L.-Hendricks-Quarry-Shortcut-2008.jpg?w=1024″] Artists ranging from Mickalene Thomas to Tammy Nguyen are banding together to sell more than $1 million in art at Sotheby\u2019s next month, with all the funds going toward Yale University\u2019s MFA art program, among the most esteemed ones of its kind in the country. All of the works will appear in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1907331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1907331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1907331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1907331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1907331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1907331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1907331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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