Why a Wealthy University Is Selling 2 of Its Paintings

Rockefeller University in Manhattan has endowment assets of $2.5 billion and took in $777 million in a five-year fund-raising campaign that ended in June. But it is selling two paintings by Joan Mitchell, an Abstract Expressionist artist, that it has owned for nearly 70 years. The two large canvases are expected to bring in as much as $32 million when they go on the block at Christie’s on Nov. 19. Lifton said that the money from the paintings would go toward biomedical research — programs “that we’re eager to support better,” including artificial intelligence, “which has really taken off in terms of its potential for life science.”