• 19 November
  • New York
Joan Mitchell’s Untitled, 1955 and City Landscape, 1955 will be sold this fall by The Rockefeller University to help support groundbreaking research and advance the university’s founding mission of science for the benefit of humanity. This pair of exceptional paintings was selected in 1958 by David Rockefeller, the architect Wallace Harrison and MoMA’s Dorothy Miller to inspire the University’s scientists. Viewed only by the University’s community for nearly seven decades, these major rediscoveries will be auctioned in the 20th Century Evening Sale as highlights of Christie’s marquee auction series in November. Mitchell and her inspiring works stand as a testament to the visionary aims that have long defined the university.

Art is a source of inspiration that sparks the imagination and elevates the spirit.
—Richard P. Lifton, Rockefeller University President

Highlights

Our mission is science; we are not a museum. The two Mitchell paintings in our collection have appreciated in value to the point that their sale can have an enormous impact in supporting Rockefeller’s mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
—Richard P. Lifton, Rockefeller University President

About The Rockefeller University

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The Rockefeller University is the world’s leading biomedical research university, drawing top scientists and graduate students to New York City from around the world in pursuit of one mission: to conduct science for the benefit of humanity. Rockefeller was founded in 1901 by John D. Rockefeller with the core principle that understanding the fundamental causes of disease provides the surest route to prevention and treatment. The university’s unique interdisciplinary environment is structured around individual laboratories rather than academic departments. Each of the 72 labs on campus is headed by a visionary scientist, who is asking big questions that can result in transformational discoveries. The success of Rockefeller’s scientists is unparalleled and has resulted in 26 Nobel Prizes, 26 Lasker Awards, and 20 National Medals of Science. Seminal discoveries from Rockefeller scientists have driven clinical advances in the treatment of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmunity, addiction, and obesity, among many other fields.

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Of all the organizations that my family's philanthropy has helped to create, The Rockefeller University has contributed more to the well-being of mankind and the world than any other.
—David Rockefeller

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MAIN IMAGE: © Estate of Joan Mitchell ABOUT THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY CAPTION: “Rockefeller University's first academic convocation, 1959. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive.”