Newport Harbor Museum Auction Net Expected to Top $200,000

The Newport Harbor Art Museum’s Art Auction ’88 on Saturday appears to have more than doubled the museum’s goal of netting at least $100,000 for the permanent collection, Newport Harbor director Kevin Consey said. Sales from the live and silent auctions approached $400,000 with expected net proceeds between $200,000 and $250,000, he said.

Leo Wyler, president of the board of trustees at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, paid the top price of $20,000 for an untitled spiraling acrylic sculpture by Fred Eversley.

However, although John Marion, chairman and chief auctioneer of Sotheby’s North America “hammered down” each of the 65 lots in the live auction, often for sums as low as half the estimated prices, 20 works of art did not sell at all.

Some pieces received no bids from the floor, and others failed to meet the so-called reserve, the confidential minimum price below which a lot cannot be sold.

As Anne Hyland, assistant vice president of Sotheby’s North America, explained, lots were not sold “if (the bidding) didn’t reach the point where the museum would make money.”

Marion is “very skillful at keeping up the momentum,” Hyland said, noting that people tend to lose interest in an auction if they sense works are not selling.

Although some of the works of art were outright gifts, others were donated with contracts stipulating that the donating artist or gallery receive a certain dollar amount from the sale. Seven of the unsold lots, the largest group from a single source, were offered by Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles.

Unsold lots were works in various media by Steve Galloway, Pauline Stella Sanchez, Wally Hedrick, David Amico, Anne and Patrick Poirier, Peter Shire, Constance Mallinson, Donald Lipski, Roger Herman, Max Cole, Barry Le Va, John Eden, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Sheila Lichacz, Steve Grossman, James Hayward, Guy Dill and Rhonda Zwiliger.

Among about 100 other successful bidders in the crowd of 400 were: Jack and Judy Slutzky, members of the museum’s Founders’ Circle, who obtained Mary Corse’s “Black Glitter Painting” for $4,000; David Coleman, chairman of the museum’s acquisition committee, who bought John McCracken’s “Painting No. 6” for $5,000; and Anwar Soliman, owner of Prego restaurant in Irvine, who acquired a Peter Alexander painting ($4,000), a Nathan Oliveira monotype ($3,000), a Manuel Neri sketch of a nude ($2,100) and a vivid mixed-media work by Italo Scanga ($4,000).