Palm Springs' Frankenthaler Sells for $4.7M

Baltimore paused its sales, but not the Palm Springs Art Museum. Last night Sotheby's sold Helen Frankenthaler's Carousel for $4,739,000, well over the high estimate, "to support the care of the collections and the Steve Chase Fund for Acquisitions."

Though the Palm Springs sale drew a fraction of the outrage that Baltimore's plans did, it is arguably even more regrettable. Baltimore is an encyclopedic museum with fantastic Matisses and Picassos. From that perspective even very good works by Still, Marden, and Warhol might seem fungible. But Carousel was the crown jewel of Palm Springs' uneven collection. That Palm Springs would sell a work by a renowned woman artist is particularly hard to understand.