On November 15, 2013, Sotheby’s will present the collection of Allan Stone, featuring African, Oceanic and Indonesian Art, from the famed collections of this legendary New York art dealer. A second sale of equal size will be held in November 2014. A first group of works from Stone’s collection was already auctioned at Christie’s in 2007.
The Allan Stone Collection is most well-known for its strong holdings of Songye and Kongo figures – partly exhibited in 2011 during “Power Incarnate” at the Bruce Museum (more info here, here & here). Especially for Songye sculpture these two sales could prove to be an important momentum.
You can read the press announcement here. Quoting Sotheby’s:
the sculptures in his personal collection are manifestations of an artistic vision that seeks to feature expressive energy through powerful accumulations of mixed media.
That’s poetry. Allan Stone did make his name dealing in 20th-century American art, particularly abstract expressionism, and the press texts clearly try to recontextualise his African art collection establishing an intellectual relationship with the assemblage sculpture that Stone championed.
A wonderful view on how Stone’s collection was presented at his house can be seen in this fragment from “The Collector: Allan Stone’s Life in Art”, a film created by his youngest daughter Olympia Stone:
For his obituary in The New York Times, click here.