Bennett College to Sell Aaron Douglas's Harriet Tubman at Sotheby's

Sotheby's New York will offer Aaron Douglas's painting Harriet Tubman (1931) on November 18 with an estimate of $2.5 million–$3.5 million — the highest estimate ever placed on a work by the Harlem Renaissance artist. The six-foot-wide canvas comes from Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, one of just two historically Black women's colleges in the US. Proceeds will support initiatives including women's health equity.

The work will go on public view at Sotheby's New York headquarters from November 7, as part of the house's marquee modern art auction. It is the first Douglas ever featured in such a high-profile sale, and it carries a house guarantee, Sotheby's confirmed to ARTnews.

Why the estimate smashes the record

Douglas's current auction high stands at just $600,000, set in 2008 when the small painting Building More Stately Mansions (1944) sold at New York's Swann Galleries — which accounts for six of the artist's top 10 prices. Harriet Tubman is dramatically larger than any of his top works at public sale.

"The thing about the market for Aaron Douglas is the paintings don't exist, period," David Galperin, Sotheby's vice chairman and head of contemporary art, told ARTnews. "The most significant painting was offered nearly two decades ago. It was on Masonite and it's about 20 inches high. Of course, since then, the market for modern art has evolved, and artists from Norman Lewis and Jacob Lawrence to Romare Bearden have been reappraised."

Galperin added that a few major works have sold privately at prices above the auction's low estimate, going directly to museums. "I wouldn't be surprised, given the importance of this work, if we see major museums globally compete for this piece," he said, citing acquisitions by the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art within the past 15 years.

What does the painting show?

Douglas depicted Tubman on elevated ground, breaking a chain as others look on. He described his subject as "a heroic leader breaking the shackles of bondage and pressing on toward a new day." The composition echoes Eugène Delacroix's 1830 masterpiece Liberty Leading the People at the Louvre. Among the surrounding figures are a man working his own land and a young woman reading a book.

Tubman escaped slavery in 1849 and then made some 13 missions back into the Southern states, rescuing about 70 enslaved people via the Underground Railroad. She later served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army during the Civil War and joined the women's suffrage movement.

How did Bennett College acquire it?

Chicago philanthropist Alfred K. Stern commissioned the work for a dining hall at the college, founded in a church basement in 1873 — a decade after the Emancipation Proclamation. It became a women's college in 1926 and, with Atlanta's Spelman College, remains one of two all-women HBCUs.

The painting has hung for two decades at the North Carolina Museum of Art, after the school, which has no museum, determined it could not responsibly care for it. The sale follows more than two years of deliberation, acting president Ronald Carter said.

"It's powerful," Carter said. "It's awesome to look at the symbolism, and for me as an African American to actually say, Yes! We are where we are because Harriet Tubman had a vision. We are who we are because we were able to do hard work to make things happen for our future."

The proceeds will fund the school's future growth, including its Women's Health Initiative, launched in January to address healthcare disparities.

A college with a civil rights record

Bennett's alumnae — the Bennett Belles — include artist Beverly Buchanan, congresswoman Alma Adams, Peace Corps director Carolyn Payton and Massachusetts assistant attorney general Glendora Putnam. In 1955, Bennett became the first four-year US college led by a Black woman, Willa Beatrice Player, who welcomed Martin Luther King Jr. to campus in 1958. Students organized key Greensboro sit-ins; this month, another generation marched 45 minutes to vote after early polling on campus was denied.

Since a 2007 traveling retrospective organized by the Spencer Museum of Art, Douglas's market has risen steadily. Whether museums compete past the estimate on November 18 will set the new benchmark for Harlem Renaissance painting at auction.