A Chance to Give Some Great Art a Good Home (For the Right Price)

Approximately 200 pieces from the personal art collection of the late, great Ray Nasher, who died a year ago this Sunday, will be going up for auction in May at Sotheby’s New York. A few of the prominent pieces to be sold include Picasso’s Le Baiser (estimated to sell for between $10 and $15 million) and L’Atelier (expected to fetch $6 to $8 million), as well as a rare series of Jasper Johns prints. Nasher’s entire collection—including those works on display at the Nasher Sculpture Center—is valued at more than $350 million.

I was lucky enough to get to interview Mr. Nasher in September 2006 at his home, for a piece that appeared in D CEO. He was so proud to show off each of the incredible pieces he kept at his residence, and talk about what each one meant to him and his late wife, Patsy. He credited his passion to his parents, who exposed him to music and art in his hometown of Boston, where, at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, he fell in love with Van Gogh’s Postman as a child. “Art has made life just so much more meaningful,” he said. “We just wanted to have in our home pieces that we loved and lived with and liked to get up every morning and enjoy. … [but] you’re selfish if you don’t utilize your art properly, because it’s something for everyone to share.” When asked how many pieces he owned in all, he replied, “Six hundred or something? I don’t know. I’m not sure. I don’t know numbers. It’s quality that counts.”