By Choire Sicha, CNN
(CNN) — A slew of paintings that once belonged to Ted Turner will go on sale in January. The works, by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, are sweeping views of the American landscape by immigrants who came to love the natural land even as it was bloodily becoming a country.
To be held on January 20 at Christie’s in New York, the sale will benefit the Turner Foundation, which supports environmental stewardship. The sale’s total estimate is around $20 million.
“These paintings meant a great deal to our dad, not only because of their beauty, but because they reflected so much of what he loved about nature and the outdoors. While it’s difficult to part with pieces that were so dear to him, our family takes comfort in knowing they will be appreciated and cherished by others. We also see this sale as another opportunity to carry forward his lifelong commitment to giving back, with proceeds going directly to the Turner Foundation to further its leadership in conservation and environmental stewardship,” the Turner family said in a statement.
Turner founded CNN in 1980 and died this year aged 87.
Thomas Moran was renowned in his time for painting and publicizing the views of what were to become America’s most famous protected lands. In 1871, he was part of a survey expedition to what were called the Montana and Wyoming Territories. His resulting paintings were an influence in the creation of Yellowstone National Park the following year and his “The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” was purchased by Congress as pro-park propaganda.
“It’s ironic that Ted Turner was interested in these as glorious depictions of the western landscape because they were made in the context of government expeditions that would ultimately lead to the destruction of those lands,” said Nika Elder, an associate professor of art at American University who specializes in the art history of the United States.
These surveys of the 1860s and 1870s were often financed by Congress “as part of its domestic policy of westward expansion,” as the office of the historian of the U.S House of Representatives put it. The resulting changes were rapid and severe. In 1887, the Dawes Act severed Native people from ownership of much of their lands, disrupting a deep ecosystem and spiking mortality rates among Native people. (“27 tribes have ties to the area and resources now found within Yellowstone National Park,” according to the National Park Service.) Montana and Wyoming became American states in 1889 and 1890.
Bierstadt too was an expedition painter. But the showy landscapes that he sketched on the road and painted back at home to acclaim were soon to go out of fashion. In 1964, a bit more than 60 years after his death, the Santa Barbara Museum held a retrospective of his work that brought it back in focus. “We live in an age which seems increasingly intrigued with the common and the banal,” wrote esteemed museum director Thomas W. Leavitt of the exhibition. “The very vulgarity which originally sold Bierstadt’s paintings to the robber barons of his time and brought heaps of abuse from later critics of more refined taste may now work once more in Bierstadt’s favor.”
The Turner Foundation funds projects that support American “natural systems,” prioritizing seven states. In 2025, the organization’s filings said they made more than $2.7M in grants in that year, including significant funding to The International Crane Foundation, the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory and the Ruffed Grouse Society.
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