What Sotheby’s $90 Million Hedreen Sale Means for Seattle University’s Museum

Sotheby’s plans to sell about 50 works from Richard and Betty Hedreen’s collection for an auction-house estimate of at least $90 million, according to Puck. The sale does not cancel the Seattle University museum project, but it does alter the public account of a gift once presented as the couple’s entire collection.

 
 

About 50 Hedreen Works Are Headed to Sotheby’s

Puck reported on September 13 that Sotheby’s will offer the group across its November sales and a February Old Masters sale in New York. The report says the consignment was selected to help secure the collection for Seattle University and underwrite a building for its planned teaching museum. That purpose is Puck’s reporting; Seattle University has not yet published a parallel announcement detailing the arrangement.

The most prominent lot is Roy Lichtenstein’s 1990 painting Reflections on “Painter and Model”, with a reported $20 million estimate. Readers looking for the artist’s broader career can find it in this overview of Roy Lichtenstein. Cecily Brown’s 12-foot-wide Untitled (Shipwreck), painted in 2017, is estimated at $7 million.

Four Old Master paintings account for another large share of the headline figure: a Georg Pencz portrait estimated at $8 million, Bartolomeo Cavarozzi’s The Sacrifice of Isaac at $7 million, Titian’s The Mater Dolorosa at $4 million and Gaetano Gandolfi’s The Birth of Venus at $2 million. These are presale estimates reported by Puck, not sale results or cash already available to the museum. The $90 million-plus total may rise or fall when bidding occurs, and Puck does not state what net amount will reach the project.

Infographic by Art in Context, based on Seattle University, Puck, KUOW.

 
 

The Public Description of the Gift Has Changed

Seattle University’s March 13, 2024 announcement described more than 200 works, valued at more than $300 million, as being gifted by Richard Hedreen. It separately identified $25 million in seed funding for the museum. Hedreen said then that his goal was to keep the collection together in the new institution.

Contemporary coverage made that scope even more explicit. The Art Newspaper said Hedreen was gifting all of the more than 200 works, while Seattle public broadcaster KUOW presented both the Lichtenstein and Brown paintings among collection highlights. Puck now places those two works in the Sotheby’s consignment. That is a documented change in which objects are destined for the university, even if the family and university still intend the remaining group to anchor the museum.

Question	What the records show
Collection count	Seattle University said “more than 200” in 2024; Puck now describes a 400-work donation and about 50 works selected for sale. The cited public records do not reconcile those figures.
Gift value	The university’s figure was more than $300 million for the collection described in 2024. It is not cash and should not automatically be applied to the differently defined group remaining in 2026.
Seed funding	$25 million was announced as a separate commitment for developing the museum.
Auction value	$90 million or more is Sotheby’s reported estimate for the consignment, not a guaranteed net contribution to construction.
Named works	Reflections on “Painter and Model” and Untitled (Shipwreck) were publicized with the gift in 2024; both are now reported for sale.

“More than 200” does not mathematically contradict 400, but the shift is too large to treat as routine precision. The records do not state whether the collection grew or the counting method changed. It would therefore be misleading to subtract 50 from the 2024 count, or to present 350 as an independently settled total on the basis of the available records.

 
 

What the Museum Still Stands to Receive

The sale removes important works, but the reported remainder is not a minor residue. Puck names paintings by Willem de Kooning, Rashid Johnson, Amy Sherald and Jonas Wood among the modern and contemporary works intended for Seattle University. It also names Bronzino, Jacopo Pontormo, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Thomas Gainsborough among the historical holdings.

That list preserves the collection’s defining cross-period structure: Renaissance and later European painting alongside postwar and contemporary American art. For a teaching museum, the range can support comparisons across portraiture, religious imagery, abstraction and changing systems of patronage. Breadth, however, is not the same as an unchanged collection. Selling the Lichtenstein and Brown means that neither work will form part of the museum’s prospective holdings, while the current value of the remaining group is unreported.

The clearest conclusion is narrower than either a “gift reversed” headline or an unchanged-gift narrative. The museum is still expected to receive hundreds of works, according to Puck, but the object group is no longer identical to the one publicly illustrated and described in 2024. Until the university issues a current checklist, the remaining collection’s exact count and valuation are unresolved.

A Seattle University campus entrance at Broadway and Harvard Avenue, photographed by PCN02WPS. Hosted by Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Cropped.

 
 

The Auction Estimate Is Not a Museum Budget

Seattle University’s 2024 record separates the collection’s stated value from the $25 million seed gift. Puck connects the planned Sotheby’s sales to securing the collection and underwriting its building, but it does not publish a construction budget, a guaranteed amount or a formula assigning proceeds. A $90 million presale estimate therefore cannot be added to the $25 million and called confirmed museum funding.

The university announced in March 2025 that it had selected Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig as architect and Sellen Construction as contractor. That official project update anticipated an August 2026 groundbreaking and an opening before classes in fall 2028. It also described the museum as a gateway at the 12th Avenue entrance to campus, with the nearby Chapel of St. Ignatius helping frame a possible future campus green.

The campus connection predates the current museum. The Hedreens were lead donors to the Chapel of St. Ignatius and supported the Lee Center for the Arts, while earlier gifts placed art throughout university buildings and outdoor spaces. The planned museum extends that institutional relationship, and the sale is now reported as supporting it. Its financial effect will remain provisional until works sell and the university or family explains how the proceeds enter the project.

The Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University, photographed by Joe Mabel. Hosted by Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Cropped.

 
 

The Gift Is Narrower, but the Museum Plan Remains

About 50 works are now reported for Sotheby’s sales with a combined estimate of at least $90 million, led by a Lichtenstein once promoted as part of the university gift. Seattle University’s permanent record establishes a separate $25 million seed commitment and a 2024 collection description of more than 200 works valued above $300 million. Puck’s newer 400-work figure is not reconciled with that record, so neither an exact remainder nor a current valuation is established. The museum remains planned for Seattle University, with fall 2028 the latest official opening target, but the final checklist and the auction’s net contribution are still unknown.