Graham Holdings Company will sell its art collection at reduced prices to Washington Post employees, Philip Kennicott reports. Graham Holdings is the new name of the company that sold the Post to Jeff Bezos last year.
Proceeds from the sale will go to TheDream.US, “a scholarship fund founded by Donald Graham to help undocumented students,” Kennicott writes.
Graham Holdings is moving out of the Washington Post building next month to a space with “very few walls,” GraHoCo spokesperson Rima Calderon tells Kennicott.
The collection “is much like the family: Unflashy and deeply local in its focus,” Kennicott writes.
Artists associated with the Washington Color school—Sam Gilliam, Jacob Kainen, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, among others—are well represented, as are national figures such as Alex Katz, whose work was originally in the Newsweek corporate collection in New York. When the Washington Post sold Newsweek in 2010 (for $1), the art was not included in the sale. Now those pieces are some of the most valuable on offer.
Graham Holdings recently moved deeper into the home-healthcare and hospice business with its acquisition of a majority share in Residential Healthcare Group. It owns Celtic Healthcare, which also provides homecare and hospice services. And it still owns some media properties, including Slate and Foreign Policy.
