An Amoako Boafo painting listed for sale in Phillips‘s upcoming modern and contemporary art day sale next week was consigned by actor and ARTnews Top 200 collector Jesse Williams, ARTnews has learned.
The 2017 oil on paper work Red Dress measures 52 3/8 inches by 56 inches and depicts Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of New York’s newly reopened Studio Museum in Harlem. It carries an estimate of $150,000 to $200,000.
The work was featured in the 2022 Boafo solo exhibition, “Soul of Black Folks,” at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. In the catalogue, Williams is listed as the lender of the work; in Phillips’s lot listing, the provenance states that the current owner bought the work directly from the artist.
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Boafo’s market has cooled considerably from its Covid-era peak. The artist has had six works sell for over $1 million, with the record set at Christie’s Hong Kong in December 2021 at $3.4 million. The most recent sale to hit seven figures happened at Sotheby’s New York in May 2022 for the 2019 painting Tonica and Adia, which sold for $1.13 million. More recently, Boafo’s paintings have sold more in the $100,000 to $300,000 range.
This isn’t the first time of late that a work once in Williams’s collection hit the block at Phillips. In May 2024, the auction house sold a 10-inch by 10-inch figurative portrait by Noah Davis titled Untitled (Boy with Glasses) in its modern and contemporary evening sale.
That work was included an exhibition of work by Davis and his older brother, artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph called “Young Blood” at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle in 2016. In installation photos of the exhibition, a photo credit line for Untitled (Boy with Glasses) reads “Collection of Aryn Drakelee-Williams and Jesse Williams“.
A spokesperson for Williams told ARTnews at the time that the Davis work was actually consigned by Williams’s ex-wife, Aryn Drake-Lee. The pair collected art from the African diaspora prolifically, with ARTnews naming Williams a collector to watch in 2021. At the time, he said he owned about 250 works. Williams and Drake-Lee divorced in 2020 and the Davis work went to Drake-Lee, the spokesperson said.
A Phillips spokesperson declined to comment on the new consignment.