The Art Leven White Glove Auction and the Legacy of Dame Marie Bashir
On the evening of 19 May 2026, Art Leven's First Nations and Australian Fine Art Auction at Artspace, Woolloomooloo, achieved what the auction world calls a white glove result — every lot sold, a 100 per cent clearance rate by volume and 129 per cent by value, realising approximately $1.3 million including Buyer's Premium. Over three and a half hours of sustained bidding, the sale demonstrated what becomes possible when a carefully assembled collection meets a market that has matured to recognise the cultural and historical weight behind individual works.
The occasion was notable not only for its commercial outcome but for what it represented institutionally. The collection at the heart of the sale belonged to the late Dame Marie Bashir AD CVO — Governor of New South Wales from 2001 to 2014, medical professor, and lifelong advocate for First Nations communities — and her husband Sir Nicholas Shehadie AC OBE, former Lord Mayor of Sydney. Presented publicly for the first time, the 79 works from their private holdings were neither assembled as investment vehicles nor acquired through intermediaries. The collection reflects sustained engagement with artists and communities across the continent, with many works acquired through direct contact and long-standing relationships. Dame Marie described her motivation plainly: she travelled to remote art centres to put her finger on the pulse of the nation.
Those journeys were often undertaken with fellow collectors and advocates Elizabeth Laverty and Anne Lewis, the group chartering small bi-engine planes to reach art centres across the country. Together, they came to represent a generation of influential female collectors who helped introduce Aboriginal art to broader audiences during a formative period in the Australian art market. That provenance — personal, relational, historically specific — shaped the character of the auction and, in all likelihood, its result.
The sale was stewardarded by Mirri Leven, Director of Art Leven. The Bashir and Shehadie family selected Leven to steward the auction, reflecting the longstanding relationships she has cultivated with First Nations artists and their families. Art Leven, founded in 1981 as Cooee Art, is Australia's oldest exhibiting fine art gallery dedicated to First Nations artists, having built a reputation over four decades grounded in scholarship, connoisseurship and long-standing relationships with artists, art centres and collectors. Mirri Leven became the sole owner and director in 2023, at which point the gallery formally transitioned from Cooee Art to Art Leven, and opened its new three-storey heritage premises in Woolloomooloo in 2026, having operated from Redfern.
The decision to hold the auction at Artspace, against the backdrop of Sydney Harbour and the Finger Wharf, was well-judged. The venue lent the evening a gravity befitting the collection, drawing approximately 70 attendees from over 160 registered in-room bidders, while more than 500 viewers followed online. Bidding participation was notably even across channels — 24 lots went to buyers in the room, 23 through telephone and absentee bids, and 33 online — a distribution that reflects both the geographic reach of the First Nations art market and the confidence now extended to online platforms by serious collectors. Of 79 successful buyers, only four came from overseas, a detail worth noting for those tracking the composition of the domestic collector base.
The individual results reinforce a broader trend toward market recognition of First Nations works with robust exhibition histories and documented provenance. The cover lot, Robert Campbell Jnr's Shooting the Blacks (1987), carried an estimate of $35,000–$45,000 and achieved $80,000 hammer ($100,000 including Buyer's Premium), surpassing the artist's previous auction benchmark of $59,000 hammer. For a work of this historical and political significance — a painting that confronts colonial violence with direct pictorial clarity — the result signals something beyond market appetite.
Jimmy Pike's Untitled similarly established a new auction high, reaching $16,000 hammer against an estimate of $4,000–$8,000, exceeding the previous benchmark of $10,000 hammer. Both works offered by Emily Kame Kngwarreye doubled their estimates, Untitled (Awelye) selling for $28,000 hammer and Alhalkere reaching $70,000 hammer. Gloria Thancoupie's Love Magic Egg achieved $11,000 hammer against an estimate of $3,000–$5,000, significantly surpassing the previous auction high for works from this series. Eighty works in total sold above their low estimate, with 49 exceeding the high estimate.
Perhaps the most instructive moment of the evening came with Ada Bird Petyarre's Jurrukukuni (Boobook Owl), a 30-centimetre figure estimated at just $200–$300. After 28 bids, involving two online bidders, two telephone bidders and three participants in the room, the work sold for $5,000 hammer.
The auction was curated around the collectors' journey of discovery and stewardship rather than focusing simply on blue-chip works. That curatorial framing — the decision to present a collection as a portrait of a life lived in sustained relationship with artists and communities distinguishes a sale from a dispersal. It situates individual objects within a context of meaning that the market, increasingly, appears willing to reward.
The white glove result confirms not only the current strength of the First Nations art market, but the increasing discernment of buyers who seek works grounded in genuine historical and personal significance. For galleries and institutions engaged with this field, the Art Leven auction offers a instructive model: rigorous provenance research, honest curatorial framing, and deep respect for the artists whose work makes any of this possible.
Art Leven is located at 104 Cathedral Street, Woolloomooloo, NSW 2011. Full auction results are available at artleven.com