Miss Porter School’s First All-Female Artist Auction at Sotheby’s

By Julia French

Miss Porter’s School, a prestigious all-girls high school located in Farmington, Connecticut, will be having a charity auction of artwork done by only female artists at Sotheby’s in New York. The auction, By Women, For Tomorrow’s Women will be the first all-female-artist benefit auction to take place at a major auction house. Oprah Winfrey and Agnes Gund, a 1956 alumni of the high school and former president of the Museum of Modern Art will serve as the honorary co-chairs of the auction.

Following the pre sales exhibition taking place on February 22, 2019, the auction will occur on March 1, 2019. The money received will be going to support financial aid for the high school. More than 25 female artists’ works will be up for sale, including the sculptor Alice Aycock and the painter Cecily Brown. Also up for sale is a painting from Carmen Herrera’s series called “Blanco y Verde” that was part of a 2016 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other artists featured in the auction include Ghada Amer, Mariana Cook, Jay DeFeo, Liz Glynn, Katharina Grosse, Jane Hammond, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Chantal Joffe, Louise Lawler, Vera Lutter, Beatriz Milhazes, Mariko Mori, Sarah Morris, Catherine Opie, Dorothea Rockburne, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Cindy Sherman, Jean Shin, Kiki Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems.

“We’re well aware of the fact that women artists are not represented in installations and museums,” said Dr. Katherine Windsor, the headmistress at Miss Porter’s. Dr. Windsor said that the purpose of the auction is to “lift up women artists and get people’s attention.”

The art works for auction have been donated by people from all over, both famous and anonymous. Notable alumni to the school include Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Gloria Vanderbilt.