Market dispatch·New York
Hidden for 40 Years: White House-Honored LA Couple's Collection Heads to Christie's, $2.5M Moore Leads
Christie's has announced "Points of Light: The Collection of Mickey and Edna Weiss," a Los Angeles collection unseen publicly since the 1980s, to be sold during its New York 20/21 Marquee Week this November. A Henry Moore bronze mother-and-child group estimated at $1.5-2.5 million leads the offering, alongside works by Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Maurice de Vlaminck and Raoul Dufy.

Christie's will bring to market a Los Angeles collection that has not been publicly viewed since the 1980s. "Points of Light: The Collection of Mickey and Edna Weiss" is drawn from the home of a couple twice honored with the President's Points of Light award for their campaign against hunger, and the sale forms part of the auction house's New York 20/21 Marquee Week this November, spread across the 20th Century Evening Sale, the Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale, the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale and online sales. Highlights go on show in Los Angeles from 14 to 17 October, the first public viewing of the works since the family acquired them. The Weiss collection spans the 20th century, from color-saturated paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, Maurice de Vlaminck and Raoul Dufy to modern sculpture built around movement and negative space. Its lead lot is Henry Moore's bronze "Mother and Child: Arms," conceived between 1976 and 1980 in the artist's celebrated semi-abstract style, carrying a $1.5-2.5 million estimate; other examples from the edition sit in the Prefectural Museum of Modern Art in Fukushima, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Henry Moore Foundation. Two Alexander Calder mobiles join the evening sale: the 1972 hanging mobile "Tres Plat," estimated at $2-3 million, and the 1966 standing mobile "Performing Seal," at $1-1.5 million. Mickey and Edna Weiss married in Los Angeles in 1941 and spent 55 years together building both a major wholesale produce business and a national food-redistribution model - after Mickey watched edible produce being discarded at the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market in 1987, the couple pioneered a system that grew into more than 150 food redistribution centers. Welcomed to the White House by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, they also supported the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Youth Symphony and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Announced the same day as the Wilma and Laurence Tisch collection, the Weiss offering arrives in a marquee season crowded with single-owner consignments.


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