The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., is proceeding with plans to sell major works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, and Georges Seurat at Sotheby’s next week, despite sharp backlash from former curators, members of the Phillips family, and a faction of the museum’s non-governing members body. The works—including O’Keeffe’s *Large Dark Red Leaves on White* (1925, est. $6–8 million), Seurat’s conté crayon drawing ($3–5 million), and Dove’s *Rose and Locust Stump* (1943, est. $1.2–1.8 million)—will be offered in Sotheby’s marquee evening sales on November 20 at its new Breuer building headquarters. Additional works by Anish Kapoor, Leland Bell, Howard Mehring, Henri Fantin-Latour, Picasso, and Milton Avery will also be sold in surrounding sales. Director and CEO Jonathan Binstock, who joined in March 2023, says proceeds will fund a permanently restricted endowment for commissioning new work by living artists, acquisitions, and collection care, aligning with founder Duncan Phillips’s support for contemporary practitioners.
This controversy matters because it reflects a broader national debate over deaccessioning in American museums. Critics, including chief curator emerita Eliza Rathbone and founder’s granddaughter Liza Phillips, argue the sales dismantle carefully built “units” of key artists and violate public trust by sending masterworks into private hands. The dispute, simmering for over 18 months, led to an agreement that tightens future deaccessioning rules by defining the core collection via the 1985 summary catalogue. The Phillips case echoes similar controversies at the Whitney Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, and SFMOMA, where institutions have sold blue-chip works to diversify collections or bolster endowments, raising questions about the balance between institutional evolution and preservation of founders’ legacies.