Artists such as Cornelia Parker and Anselm Kiefer have consigned works for an auction at Phillips in London which will support the redevelopment of the Warburg Institute, a London University institution focused on “the interaction of ideas, images and society”. Sixteen works will be offered in the 20th-century and contemporary art day sale on 4 March.
A 2016 work by the Italian artist Arcangelo Sassolino comprises 1,000 tonnes of paper (Senza Titolo, 2016, est £3,000-£5,000) while Kiefer has donated The Morgenthau Plan (2021) a composition made of gold leaf and silvered glass (est £25,000-£35,000). Parker’s Fox Talbot's Articles of Glass (all that are left), 2016, is the artist's proof number three from an edition of five artist's proofs (est £1,500-£2,500). Gerhard Richter, Goshka Macuga and Michael Joo have also consigned pieces.
Sale proceeds will go towards the Warburg Renaissance development project which will transform the Institute’s Bloomsbury base. Among the new public facilities planned are an exhibition gallery, a digital laboratory and a bigger lecture hall in the central courtyard, offering talks with curators, artists and scholars. The ceramicist Edmund de Waal’s library of exile installation will be displayed in the Institute’s new gallery.
Anselm Kiefer's Der Morgenthau-Plan (The Morgenthau Plan, 2021)
Courtesy of Phillips
Bill Sherman, Warburg director, says in a statement: “The project will restore the Warburg Institute’s original mix of discovery, display and debate, and the new programmes, including residencies and exhibitions, require new resources.” The University of London is providing core funding of £9.5m towards the £14.5m refurbishment project.
The Warburg, a research institute catering to masters and doctoral students, is devoted to the study of cultural memory through the interactions between images and society over time. Its collection of more than 450,000 images and at least 350,000 books is based on the unique library amassed by the German Jewish art historian and banking scion Aby Warburg (1866-1929). Established in his Hamburg home in 1909, it was smuggled out of Nazi Germany to London in 1933. The institute became part of the University of London in 1944, moving into its current building, designed by Charles Holden, in 1957.
In 2020, Warburg’s image atlas known as the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne was shown at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. Mnemosyne is an atlas of pictures, carefully juxtaposed and sequenced to provide insights into the nature of thinking through art.
