On Tuesday, June 9, Sotheby’s New York will offer Art & Design from The Collection of Barbara Gladstone — a dedicated single-owner evening sale representing the personal holdings of one of Contemporary Art’s most consequential dealers. The sale opens at 10:00 AM EDT at 1334 York Avenue and is estimated to exceed $12 million.
For Manhattan collectors active in the secondary market, this is not a routine estate dispersal. Gladstone was not a passive accumulator — she shaped the market for the artists in this sale. Works by Richard Prince, Elizabeth Peyton, On Kawara, Thomas Schütte, Mike Kelley, and Carroll Dunham passed through her gallery before they passed through her collection. That gallerist-to-collector provenance chain is exactly what secondary buyers want to see on a title history.
The Collection and Its Collector
Barbara Gladstone founded Gladstone Gallery in 1980 and built it into one of the defining forces in Contemporary Art over four decades. Her roster — which at various points included Matthew Barney, Anish Kapoor, Rosemarie Trockel, and Richard Prince — helped set the institutional and commercial canon for the art that defines the second half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st.
Gladstone passed away in 2024, and the works in this June 9 sale represent the personal holdings she kept closest. That they are now coming to market in a dedicated single-owner format signals that the estate is positioning these not as deaccessions but as curated statements — each lot carrying the implicit endorsement of the person who knew these artists best.
Key Lots and Market Reads
The top lot is Richard Prince’s Man Crazy Nurse (2002–2003), a two-meter-tall portrait first shown in Prince’s 2003 Gladstone Gallery exhibition before entering her personal collection. Its provenance — gallery exhibition, followed by immediate acquisition by the dealer herself — is essentially a certificate of conviction. Estimate: $4 million to $6 million.
A second Prince, a blue Joke painting from 1988, is estimated at $2.5 million to $3.5 million. These two lots alone put the sale in the range of a significant single-session return for collectors tracking Prince’s market after his recent institutional retrospectives.
Andy Warhol’s Black Flowers (1964) carries an estimate of $1 million to $1.5 million — a classic mid-period Warhol at a moment when the market for accessible-priced Warhol has shown consistent depth. Mike Kelley’s Memory Ware Flat #42 (2003) and Rudolf Stingel’s Untitled (Bolego) (2006), estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million, round out a sale that reads as a tight edit of the artists who defined the 2000s gallery moment.
What This Means for Collateral Positioning
Single-owner sales like this one function as clean market events — no blended provenance, no mixed-period confusion, no competing narratives. The hammer prices established on June 9 will serve as fresh comparable data for any Manhattan collector holding works by these artists, whether for resale, donation, or loan-to-value purposes.
Prince in particular has been the subject of intensified institutional attention in recent years. A fresh hammer from a Gladstone-provenance Prince — across two different work types, nurse painting and joke painting — gives the market two new data points simultaneously. That’s useful for anyone with Prince material looking to mark a position before the fall season.
The broader Design Week context matters here too. Sotheby’s has positioned this sale alongside the Emmanuel de Bayser Of Form and Color sale (June 10) and the Important Design general sale (June 11), creating a three-night contemporary-design sequence. Buyers making the Gladstone decision on June 9 are likely the same collectors weighing Jouve and Royère on June 10 and 11. Cross-lot strategy across the three nights is worth planning before the week opens.
Preview, Registration, and Calendar
Sale: Art & Design from The Collection of Barbara Gladstone
Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2026 | 10:00 AM EDT
Venue: Sotheby’s New York, 1334 York Avenue
Estimate: In excess of $12 million
Bidding: Live, absentee, and online via Sotheby’s platform
Preview is expected at Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters during the standard exhibition week preceding the sale. Registration is available through Sotheby’s client services or at sothebys.com.
For New York Loan clients holding contemporary art assets in the Gladstone-adjacent artists — Prince, Warhol, Stingel, Kelley — June 9 is a reference point worth watching before making collateral decisions ahead of summer.
