Here's the Portrait of Sidney Poitier Blue Ivy Tried to Buy for $19,000
She was outbid by Tyler Perry for "Young Sidney" by artist Tiffanie Anderson, but Blue took home a work by Samuel Levi Jones for $10,000.
Jay-Z, Blue Ivy, and Beyoncé at the Grammy Awards. Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images for NARAS
It’s good parenting to teach kids early how to be generous, judicious managers of money: encouraging them to give a portion of their allowance to a good cause, paying them a few bucks for extra chores. And it is extremely awesome and cute that Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s version of this landed Blue Ivy, age six, in a bidding war with Tyler Perry—for a good cause, at a charity auction!—to buy a portrait of Sidney Poitier by artist Tiffanie Anderson. (Incredibly, she’s a former member of Pussycat Dolls spinoff band Girlicious.) Although Perry topped Blue's $19,000 offer for “Young Sidney” with a winning bid of $20,000, she went home with another work by Samuel Levi Jones for $10,000. Plus, she gained valuable experience in charitable giving and how to start an art collection early.
The family Knowles-Carter attended Saturday night’s Wearable Art Gala in Los Angeles, co-hosted by Blue’s grandma Tina Knowles Lawson and Richard Lawson, to benefit the Where Art Can Occur (WACO) Theater Center. Blue and Beyoncé showed up in matching gold dresses, the younger Carter’s a pouf of tinsel fringe with a golden bob wig, the elder’s a gown with a sweeping metallic train. During the auction, emceed by Star Jones, Blue lifted her auction paddle for the work by Anderson and a laughing Jay-Z pretended to wrestle it out of his daughter’s hands. Still, the purchase did seem to have been preemptively green-lighted by her parents. “Her mother and father have been talking about how you gather art, and that is a big deal for African Americans,” Jones said from the stage. “Miss Tina told me about this!”
Later, Beyoncé received an award for her humanitarianism and was thanked by Michelle Obama in a pre-recorded speech. “Because millions of girls around the world love you and admire you—including my daughters—it means even more that they see you standing up for others,” Obama said. “I love you. I am inspired by you. I’m so honored and proud of everything that you have achieved and everything that you have contributed to our country and our world.”
Art world, take notice: there’s a new collector in town, and she’s learning from two greats.
