Art collectors will get another chance to snap up remnants from the office walls of the world's most notorious failed bank in an auction by Sotheby's in September of over 400 items from Lehman Brothers' once renowned hoard, including work by Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter and Félix González-Torres, following a smaller sale from the company's collection last October.
Liquidators to the defunct Wall Street firm announced today that a large slice of Lehman's collection will go under the hammer in September in an auction expected to raise $10m (£6.89m). The proceeds will go to creditors who are still owed billions of dollars following the bank's spectacular collapse in September 2008.
Kelly Wright, an adviser to Lehman's estate, described the lots as a "visionary" collection: "Many of the works were acquired from cutting-edge and emergent artists who have since evolved into the vanguards of the contemporary art world."
Lehman inherited a significant chunk of the collection when it bought a US asset management firm, Neuberger Berman, in 2003. Neuberger's founder, Roy Neuberger, had been an enthusiastic corporate acquirer of art and Lehman subsequently built on his stockpile.
Following Lehman's bankruptcy, employees bought out Neuberger Berman, which survives with 1,600 employees and $180bn of assets under management. Neuberger exercised an option to purchase several hundred works from Lehman but the items left behind are to go on the block.
An early Damien Hirst wall piece called We've Got Style (The Vessel Collection – Blue) ( is set to be the biggest seller with an estimated price tag of $800,000 to $1.2m. A cabinet full of ceramic objects, the piece was produced before Hirst's art hit the headlines when work such as his shark preserved in formaldehyde attracted record multimillion-pound prices.
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