Kluge collection sale a test for the market

DEALERS will be watching when the mogul's trove of 56 works of indigenous art go on the block.

THE art collection of American media mogul John Kluge, who died in 2010, is being readied for auction through Mossgreen in Melbourne on June 6.

The pictures are the final tranche of the collector's extensive estate, which has been dispersed by Christie's New York. Christie's Australian representative Ronan Sulich says the company has sold all other items in the US but decided the Aboriginal art would find its best market in Australia.

"The opportunity for realising the best prices (we thought) would be in Australia," Sulich says.

The collection of 56 lots of mostly western desert paintings includes some early Papunya boards, including Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri's Sandhill Dreaming and Anatjari Tjakamarra's Water Dreaming from 1971 or 1972.

Mossgreen's Paul Sumner says the value of the collection has not yet been calculated because the catalogue is still being prepared but he admits the market for indigenous works is tough.

"There's only ever been two or three significant collections of indigenous art repatriated to Australia for sale before," he says. "This will be a good test of the market."

Kluge left the collection to New York's Columbia University, which has decided to sell it.

All the works will be accompanied by certificates permitting their export from Australia that exempt them from movable cultural heritage protection on the grounds they are already foreign-owned.

Sumner says this is not unusual in the US where philanthropic gifts are often bequeathed to institutions for fundraising.

Another significant collection of indigenous works collected by Kluge has been housed at the University of Virginia as the Kluge-Ruhe Collection since 1997.

Kluge began collecting Aboriginal art in 1988, then in 1993 purchased the collection and archives of Kansas professor Edward Ruhe, who had begun collecting Aboriginal art while in Australia as a Fulbright scholar in 1965. The Virginia collection is seen as the best public collection of Aboriginal art in the US.