NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s and the Yale School of Art will come together this May to present a benefit auction during The New York Sales, in support of a major long-term initiative to expand access to arts education. Bringing together works donated by artists, alumni, collectors, and galleries, the sale reflects a shared commitment to bolstering the next generation of artists through meaningful, lasting financial support.

This collaboration marks a rare partnership between a leading university and an international auction house, grounded in a common goal: to strengthen access to artistic training at one of the world’s most influential art schools. Proceeds from the sale will be directed to the Yale School of Art Dean’s Scholarship Fund, contributing to an ongoing effort to build endowed resources that support students over time.

Since 2021, the Yale School of Art has significantly expanded its commitment to financial aid access for students, increasing scholarship funding and broadening access to its Master of Fine Arts program. The School is now working toward a further expansion of endowed scholarships, with the aim of substantially supporting all students admitted to its MFA program following the need-blind admissions process. The benefit auction at Sotheby’s forms part of this wider initiative, helping to advance a model of sustained investment in arts education and to minimize the burden of debt that may prevent MFA graduates from pursuing careers in art.

Funds raised through the sale will be placed within Yale’s endowment, where they will be invested to provide consistent, long-term support exclusively for MFA student scholarships. Structured to balance existing needs with future growth, this approach ensures that the auction’s impact will extend well beyond the moment of the sale, to support successive generations of artists over time.

Works included in the auction have been contributed by members of the global art community, including prominent Yale alumni and leading contemporary artists whose practices reflect the School of Art’s

enduring influence. The advisory committee includes Yvonne Force and Leo Villareal, Yana Peel, Lucas Zwirner, Komal Shah, Mickalene Thomas, among others, and additional donors include Ilana Savdie, William Cordova, Wardell Milan, and Iwan and Manuela Wirth. Their participation underscores a shared belief in the importance of access to arts education, the necessity of creating conditions for artists to commit themselves to their work post-graduation, and the ongoing resonance of contemporary artistic practice.

Artwork Highlights

Josef Albers
Study for Homage to the Square
1976
Est. $80,000-120,000

A foundational figure in twentieth-century art and pedagogy, Josef Albers played a defining role in shaping modern approaches to color and perception, particularly during his influential tenure at Yale, where he led the Department of Design. Study for Homage to the Square (1976) belongs to the artist’s seminal series, exploring the relational properties of color through precise and methodical variation. Works on paper such as this offer a rare insight into the disciplined process that underpins one of the most influential bodies of work in modern art.

Barkley L. Hendricks Quarry Shortcut 2008
Est. $60,000-80,000

Barkley L. Hendricks, who earned both his BFA and MFA from the Yale School of Art, is celebrated for his incisive portraits that center Black subjects with clarity and presence. Painted during the artist’s travels in Jamaica, Quarry Shortcut (2008) forms part of a series of landscapes that reflect his engagement with the island’s terrain and histories, including the enduring impact of colonialism. In contrast to his iconic studio portraits, these works offer a quieter, contemplative view of place, expanding the scope of Hendricks’s practice.

Howardena Pindell
Untitled #123
2024
Est. $20,000-30,000

Howardena Pindell received her MFA from the Yale School of Art and Architecture in 1967, where she was among the first Black women to study art at the institution. There she encountered the color theories of Josef Albers through teacher Si Sillman, an influence that would prove formative in shaping her lifelong engagement with color, structure and the materiality of the painted surface.

Untitled #123, executed in 2024, reflects the full depth of a practice that has unfolded over six decades. Drawing on her signature use of the grid as both formal device and conceptual readymade, Pindell works across layers of color and texture, incorporating influences drawn from textile traditions alongside the punched paper dots and dense chromatic surfaces that have defined her practice since the early 1970s. The work connects directly to the exhibition's broader institutional thread: alongside Josef Albers, whose Study for Homage to the Square is also offered in the sale, Pindell represents a living link between Yale's foundational pedagogy and the most vital currents in contemporary American abstraction.

Richard Prince Spiritual America IV 2025
Est. $500,000-700,000

A central figure in postwar American art, Richard Prince has long interrogated authorship, image circulation, and the construction of identity. Spiritual America IV (2025) revisits one of the artist’s most controversial and enduring bodies of work, reworking imagery first associated with a widely debated 1983 photograph to probe questions of originality and reproduction. In the present work, Prince returns to the subject decades later, underscoring the lasting resonance of these ideas within contemporary visual culture.

Do Ho Suh Staircase/s 2019
Est. $200,000-300,000

Do Ho Suh, who received his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 1997, is internationally recognized for his large-scale fabric architectures, translucent 1:1 replicas of homes and spaces he has inhabited across Seoul, New York and London, that explore memory, migration and the idea of home as something carried within us rather than fixed in place. Staircase/s belongs to a body of works on paper through which Suh translates the three-dimensional concerns of his installations into an intimate medium, dissolving sculptural forms onto paper to create works that are at once architectural and deeply personal. At the scale and intricacy of the present work, it represents the finest example of the artist's practice on paper to come to market. The breadth and ambition of Suh's practice was recently celebrated in The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House at Tate Modern in London, his first major solo exhibition in the city in a generation, which presented three decades of work and drew sold-out audiences throughout its run from May to October 2025.

Mickalene Thomas Josephine Baker 2002
Est. $250,000-350,000

Mickalene Thomas, who received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2002, is celebrated for her richly layered portraits that reframe histories of representation. In Josephine Baker (2002), Thomas turns to the legendary performer and activist, constructing a bold, stylized image that foregrounds Black femininity, glamour, and agency. Through her distinctive collage-like approach, the work reclaims and repositions a cultural icon within the canon of art history.