Major Seattle Art Collector Pledged Art To Museum. So Why Is It Being Sold This Week?

In 2007 Barney Ebsworth and other local donors pledged an estimated $1 billion worth of art to celebrate three things: SAM’s big downtown expansion, the Olympic Sculpture Park and SAM’s 75th anniversary. “We’re thrilled,” then-SAM director Mimi Gates told The Seattle Times. Fast-forward 11 years: Ebsworth died in April. This week, nearly 100 works from his collection, including most — or even all — of the 65 promised to SAM, are up for sale in a two-day auction that ends Nov. 14.