Pennsylvania College’s Contentious Sale of Its Collection Nets Nearly $1 Million
July 22, 2025 | In the PressFrom artnet (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/albright-college-collection-sale-reading-museum-2669929)
For art institutions big and small, the act of selling works to raise funds remains highly controversial and, in many cases, all but prohibited. So when it emerged in May that Albright College, in Reading, Pennsylvania, was quietly deaccessioning its Freedman Gallery collection, the pushback from faculty, community members, and the Freedman family itself was immediate—albeit futile. The Freedmans called the decision “shortsighted and counterproductive,” one that turned their namesake gallery from a “thriving draw” for the school into “little more than a hallway.”
Less than two months on, Albright College has indeed sold its Freedman Gallery collection. It has collected $995,000 from the sale, much needed given it has only recently redressed significant budget deficits. Many works from the collection will also remain in the local community after Reading Public Museum struck a pre-sale agreement with the private liberal arts school to acquire more than 250 works.
With limited time and a restricted budget, the challenge was to pick through the Freedman Gallery collection and decide which works would best bolster the museum’s holdings and serve the Reading community, according to the institution. The chosen works, selected by the museum in a months-long process, fall into three broad buckets.
The first are works that enhance those already in the collection and include work by Françoise Gilot, Bridget Riley, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, and Rufino Tamayo. Then there are works by “renowned masters,” those deemed too influential for the museum to take a pass on, and include works by Claes Oldenburg, Henry Moore, and Robert Rauschenberg. Last are works with a local resonance and include an oil painting by Kyohei Inukai of Gustav Oberlaender, one of the founders of the Reading Public Museum, and a portrait by George Rickey of Arthur Watson, a Reading High School graduate.
“The museum holds the largest collection of artwork between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia,” Scott Schweigert, a curator at the museum, said in a statement. “Because of this, we really had to perform our own due diligence to not only figure out what best enhanced our collection but also to avoid duplicating anything.”
Both the museum and the college celebrated the result. Geoffrey Fleming, the museum’s CEO, hailed the cooperation and called the endeavor successful. The museum plans to stage an exhibition including some of the acquired works and launch a traveling exhibition. James Gaddy, Albright College’s vice president, said the school “was proud to have preserved important works for the community and kept them accessible to the public.” Funds raised in the sale support student scholarships and the school’s art program.
The Freedman family, however, was less sanguine, with Karen J. Freedman worrying that the sale will harm the school’s reputation.
“While it is heartening to see that a small part of the Freedman Gallery’s collection may remain in the community at the Reading Museum, it remains clear that the amount of money generated from the sale cannot meaningfully offset the school’s debt,” Freedman said in an emailed statement to Artnet News contributor Brian Boucher. “From our perspective, Albright’s decision continues to read as an act of fiscal desperation that will harm the school’s reputation and lessen its draw for prospective students.”
For the works not acquired by Reading Public Museum, an auction handled by Pennsylvania auctioneer Pook and Pook, took place online on July 16. It surpassed the college’s presale estimates. The best performing lots were those by Salvador Dalí and contemporary Russian artist Leonid Sokov. Dalí’s The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1970 to 1976), a bronze sculpture of a bullfighter enmeshed with musical instruments, sold for $100,000 above its high-estimate of $50,000. Four of Sokov’s characteristically irreverent oil paintings that bring together American and Soviet pop culture sold for north of $20,000, all smashing their estimates.
The gallery and its collection was named for Doris C. Freedman, who graduated from Albright College in 1950 and went onto be the first director of New York’s Public Art Fund and New York’s first director of cultural affairs. She helped fund the creation of the gallery with a major gift in 1975 with much of the collection later donated by Alex Rosenberg, a New York art dealer and alumnus.
