Venus Williams and Adam Pendleton to Co-Host Auction at Pace, Benefitting Nina Simone’s Childhood Home

Artist Adam Pendleton and tennis champion and art collector Venus Williams will curate a charity auction as part of a benefit gala hosted by Pace Gallery this spring. Taking place at the gallery’s flagship New York space on May 20, the auction, co-organized with Sotheby’s, will support a preservation project for the childhood home of Nina Simone.

A few months ago, Pendleton approached Pace, which represents him, with the idea of hosting an event to benefit the home’s preservation, which Pendleton, along with fellow artists Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson, and Julie Mehretu, had jointly purchased for $95,000 in 2017. (The following year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the clapboard house, located in Tryon, North Carolina, a “National Treasure.”)

“We jumped at the opportunity,” Pace CEO Marc Glimcher said in a statement about the benefit. “In his paintings, drawings, and other works, Adam creates spaces of engagement, often using indexical or documentary processes, and this whole project speaks to the vast scope of that vision.”

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust that is the largest such effort dedicated to preserving African American historic sites, spearheaded the project which aims to restore the birthplace of the American singer-songwriter and civil rights activist.

In addition to artworks by Pendleton, Gallagher, Johnson, and Mehretu, the auction will also include works for sale by Mary Weatherford, Stanley Whitney, Robert Longo, and Cecily Brown. Several of the works will be on view at Pace between May 12 and May 22, the run of the online portion of the sale.

“Each of the artists Adam and I have selected for the auction has a unique, powerful voice, and we’ve been moved by their generosity and enthusiasm for this important cause,” Williams said in a statement. “It’s been a privilege to collaborate with Adam in curating the auction.”