Image: Aspen Art Museum, Los Angeles
The Aspen Art Museum has opened ArtCrush Auction 2026, the latest edition of its signature summer gala and fundraising auction, with bidding and public viewing scheduled across late July and early August. The museum says the program runs July 14–31, 2026 in Aspen, with the online auction open through August 1. A live auction will take place at the ArtCrush Gala on Friday, July 31, in collaboration with Christie’s.
According to the museum, this year’s auction brings together works donated by artists and their galleries in support of the institution’s mission and programming. The selection spans emerging and internationally recognized artists and is presented as part of ArtCrush, which the museum describes as its annual fundraiser. The auction page says lots range from under $500 to over $500,000, and that the works will be on view at the museum from July 14 through July 30, with the online auction on display until August 1. Inquiries are directed to bid@aspenartmuseum.org.
The museum’s auction materials emphasize artist equity alongside fundraising. In honor of its founding by artists, Aspen Art Museum says it will again offer participating artists the option to retain a percentage of the value of their auctioned work. The auction was curated in collaboration with the ArtCrush Gala co-chairs and advisors Mary Zlot and Bernie Lagrange. Support for the 2026 edition is led by ZEGNA, with major support from Van Cleef & Arpels and additional support from Bank of America, Christie’s, and Saslove & Warwick at Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
Among the live auction works highlighted by the museum is Michelangelo Pistoletto’s ‘White curtain’ (2026), a silkscreen on polished stainless steel measuring 78 3/4 × 31 1/2 × 1 in. The work was kindly donated by the artist with the support of ZEGNA, Galleria Continua and Lévy Gorvy Dayan. The museum lists an estimate of $650,000–$750,000. In its description, Aspen Art Museum notes that Pistoletto’s mirror works opened the picture plane to surrounding space and the viewer, while the curtain motif introduces tension between presence and concealment.
Also featured is Adrián Villar Rojas’s ‘Untitled (From the Series The Language of the Enemy)’ (2025), a bronze work measuring 53 1/8 × 65 3/4 × 95 5/8 in. and weighing about 1,100 lbs. The piece was kindly donated by the artist, kurimanzutto and Marian Goodman, with estimate available upon request. The museum describes the sculpture as taking the form of a life-sized triceratops skull from which a human figure emerges, and says it collapses boundaries between fossil and artifact, nature and culture. The work is currently on view at the Aspen Art Museum as part of Adrián Villar Rojas: ‘First Gods, Lost Animals’, which remains on view through April 11, 2027.
The live auction roster also includes works by Sayre Gomez, Xinyi Cheng, Camille Henrot, Keith Mayerson, Kelly Akashi, George Condo and Rachel Rose, among others, while the online auction focuses on works on paper by artists including Andy Warhol, Josef Albers and Leonora Carrington, together with emerging artists. The museum also presents a Design Room titled ‘Wunderkammer’, curated by Sarah Broughton of Rowland+Broughton Architecture and Interior Design and produced in partnership with Design Miami.
An ArtCrush After Party is scheduled for July 31 from 9 PM to midnight under the ArtCrush tent at the base of Buttermilk Mountain, with music by Jean d’Armes. The museum says the auction lots will be shipped from Aspen and that there is no buyer’s premium, with the difference between the mid-estimate and the winning bid treated as a tax-deductible donation to the museum.
