A painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat will head to auction at Sotheby’s this May with an estimate “in excess of $45 million,” the house announced on Monday, poising it to become one of the most expensive works by the artist ever to hit the block.
The painting, titled Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) and dated to 1983, last sold at auction in 2013, when it was featured in a Christie’s sale in London. It was purchased by an unnamed buyer for $14.6 million; the painting’s value now appears to have increased threefold.
Between 2013 and 2018, the painting was on long-term loan to the Fondation Beyeler, a museum in Riehen, Switzerland, known for its high-quality surveys for blue-chip artists. Then, in 2019, it appeared in a Basquiat show staged at a private museum in New York owned by collector Peter Brant, whose holdings are known to include many key works by Basquiats.
It’s unclear if Brant is the seller of the work because Sotheby’s did not name the individual or entity that had consigned the painting. However, Brant does appear to have sold a Basquiat from his collection on at least one recent occasion. In 2024, ARTnews reported that Brant was the seller of an untitled 1982 Basquiat portrait that sold at Christie’s for just under $23 million.
Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) dates to a point in Basquiat’s short career when his fame was still on the ascent. It figured in a 1983 show staged by dealer Larry Gagosian in Los Angeles that also included Hollywood Africans, a painting owned by the Whitney Museum that counts as one of the few Basquiats held institutionally in the US. Gagosian exhibited Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) again in LA in 2024.
Like many of Basquiat’s other works, the seven-foot-tall Museum Security combines scrawled text and graffiti-like images to comment on power dynamics, the flow of money, and racism. It alludes to the possibility of economic free fall through phrases such as “Hooverville,” a reference to shantytowns built during the Great Depression, and also comments on the art market through phrases such as “Priceless Art.”
Grégoire Billault, Sotheby’s chairman of contemporary art, said in a statement that the work is “a storied masterpiece,” and that the painting is “executed at the height of [Basquiat’s] career, on an impressive scale, and charged with the imagery and language that made his work instantly recognizable.” (“Height” is debatable, since Basquiat’s career lasted for five more years after he painted Museum Security, though Billault is likely referring to the fact that paintings by Basquiat produced in 1982, the year prior to this work’s completion, are considered highly valuable on the secondary market.)
If the work meets its estimate, it is virtually assured to land among the most expensive Basquiats ever sold at auction. The artist’s record, minted in 2017, stands at $110.5 million.
The painting is also one of the most expensive artworks set to hit the auction block during the May New York sales, which typically act as one of the bellwether moments for both the US and international art market.
Last week brought news of two big consignments: $130 million in art from the collection of the late dealer Robert Munchin, including a Rothko painting with a low estimate of $70 million, which will also head to Sotheby’s, as well as $450 million in art from S.I. Newhouse’s collection that will be sold at Christie’s. The Newhouse consignment includes a painting by Jackson Pollock and a sculpture by Constantin Brancusi, each priced at $100 million.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown), 1983.
Courtesy Sotheby's
