Collector Jennifer Gilbert Is Selling Modernist Masterpieces To Fund Her New Arts Space

Jennifer Gilbert is sending a group of works from her personal collection to Sotheby's New York this spring, with the sale expected to raise more than $10 million for Lumana, the nonprofit arts organization she founded in 2025. The auction will unfold across the house's May and June 2026 sales, and the lineup places blue-chip modernism at the center of a civic-minded fundraising effort.

The strongest lot is Joan Mitchell's Loom II (1976), which carries a $5 million to $7 million estimate. Kenneth Noland's Circle (1958) follows at $4 million to $6 million. More modestly priced, but still significant within the context of the sale, are George Rickey's Orenary (1955), estimated at $50,000 to $70,000, and Harry Bertoia's Untitled, expected to bring $80,000 to $120,000. The works will be on view at Sotheby's New York galleries before the auctions.

Gilbert has framed the sale as part of a larger effort to build an institution that can support artists and designers over time. In a statement, she said that once Lumana opens, it will“support new generations of artists, designers, and the institutions that champion them,” adding that it felt fitting for the work of Modernist artists she admires to help lift up those who follow.

Lumana is being developed in Stanton Yards on Detroit's East Village riverfront, on a site once used for shipbuilding. SO-IL is adapting the project, which will include Gilbert's foundation, a café, event spaces, two exhibition halls, a bookstore, and an auditorium. The opening is expected in late 2027.

The sale also extends a public-facing pattern already visible in Detroit. Late last year, selections from Gilbert's collection were shown at Shepherd in Seen/Scene, a presentation partly curated by Nick Cave and featuring works by Henry Taylor, Jeffrey Gibson, Helen Frankenthaler, Olafur Eliasson, and Rashid Johnson. Together, the exhibition and the auction suggest a collector using the market not simply to disperse works, but to build infrastructure for the city's cultural future.

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