ARTWORK TOPS SALES FOR EAST COAST ESTATE SALE
From the Buffalo News, 10/2011
LOCKPORT (NY)— The three-day Charles Rand Penney estate sale last month netted more than $100,000, with online efforts continuing to move unsold items.
“We started with somewhere in the vicinity of 3,500 items and ended up with 700,” said F. Gerard Hogan, the Lockport attorney who is serving as executor of Penney’s estate.
The legendary collector, whose trove of local paintings was used to stock the Burchfield Penney Art Center, died last year at age 87.
But Penney didn’t just collect art. His holdings included everything from World’s Fair memorabilia to exotic national costumes from all over the world.
Many of his items were donated to such recipients as the Erie Canal Discovery Center in Lockport, the Buffalo Museum of Science and the Castellani Art Gallery at Niagara University....
The most expensive item in the estate sale, a $12,000 painting called “Tactic II” by abstract expressionist Jimmy Ernst, went unsold. Hogan said it has been shipped to New York City gallery owner Jim Goodman, who has helped to sell other rare art in the Penney collections.
The proceeds from all the sales will be divided among Penney’s heirs according to a share system specified in his will.
The heirs include seven nieces and nephews, a few friends, the Butler Library at Buffalo State College, the Buffalo Museum of Science and the Erie Canal Discovery Center.
