O prah Winfrey and Agnes Gund have signed on as Honorary Co-Chairs of By Women, For Tomorrow’s Women, a charity auction to benefit Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut. The event marks the first-ever all-women benefit auction at a major auction house with full proceeds to support financial aid for students at the prestigious all girls school. Modern and contemporary works by more than 25 pioneering female artists will be sold as the centerpiece of Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated auction on 1 March.
Winfrey has been a longtime supporter of Miss Porter’s School, the nation’s leading all-girls private high school and Gund, a graduate of the school in 1956, is one of the most important patrons of the arts in America and exemplary in her support of women artists. Winfrey is a strong believer in the power of single-sex education for girls and is the founder of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (OWLAG) in South Africa.
The exciting group of more than 25 women artists include Ghada Amer, Alice Aycock, Cecily Brown, Mariana Cook, Jay DeFeo, Liz Glynn, Katharina Grosse, Jane Hammond, Carmen Herrera, 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.
Among the highlights to be offered on 1 March is a major abstract painting by Carmen Herrera, Blanco y Verde (1966-67), the most important work by the artist ever to appear at auction. The work is part of Herrera’s breakthrough series of the same name and was featured in the recent retrospective of the artist’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight.
