Stolen Art DealerErnie Barnes’s painting of a packed wooden dance hall: long-limbed dancers sway shoulder to shoulder, most with their eyes shut, a woman in a red dress at left, a singer in an orange suit and a saxophonist on stairs at right, and banners across the top reading ‘Welcome to The Sugar Shack’ and ‘Listen to WMPG’.
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Catalogue No. 06 · Christie’s · New York
The Sugar Shack
Sold for
$15.3million
Christie’s, New York · 12 May 2022 · 128th of 392 in the Record Book
Confirmed by two sourcesAbout $17.6 million in today’s money: 200 years of the typical US household’s income. Source
- Artist
- Ernie Barnes (American, 1938–2009)
- Title
- The Sugar Shack
- Date
- 1976
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Size
- 91.4 × 121.9 cm (36 × 48 in)
Look closer
Eyes shut
Nearly all the dancers have their eyes closed, a signature of Barnes’s work. He explained it as showing how blind we are to one another’s humanity.
Stretched dancers
The dancers are long-limbed, swaying figures packed shoulder to shoulder. Up close they read as one crowd moving together, not as individual portraits.
No fifth banner
Banners hang across the top of the dance hall, but none advertises Marvin Gaye’s album. Culture Type notes that the album-cover version carries a fifth banner and this canvas does not, the quickest visible sign it is the second version.
Listen to the story
The narration from our Reel, about a minute long.
Read the narration
Estimate: two hundred thousand dollars. The bidding didn't stop there. Ernie Barnes, a former pro footballer, painted this dance hall in nineteen seventy-six. It's a memory: Barnes said he snuck into a dance at thirteen. Look closely: nearly every dancer has their eyes closed. He said it shows how blind we are to one another's humanity. A first version became Marvin Gaye's I Want You album cover. At Christie's in twenty twenty-two, poker player Bill Perkins kept bidding. Past two hundred thousand. Past a million. Past ten million. Sold… for fifteen point three million dollars. But this is the second version: no album banner. Christie's essay calls it Sugar Shack II. Eddie Murphy says the first is his. Estimate: two hundred thousand dollars. Perkins told the New York Times: "I stole it."
Ernie Barnes played professional football before he became a painter. He said he snuck into a dance at the Durham Armory at thirteen, and painted that night two decades later. Nearly every dancer has their eyes shut. Barnes said that shows how blind we are to one another’s humanity.
He painted the scene twice in 1976. The first version became the cover of Marvin Gaye’s album I Want You. The canvas that sold is the second. Christie’s own catalogue essay calls it Sugar Shack II, and Eddie Murphy says he owns the first.
Christie’s estimated it at $150,000 to $200,000. On 12 May 2022 in New York, the Houston collector Bill Perkins won it with a $13 million hammer bid. With fees the price was $15.3 million, about 76 times the high estimate. Perkins reportedly told the New York Times it was a steal, and that he would have paid a lot more.
As of October 2026, no higher Barnes price has been reported.
The sale
- Auction house
- Christie’s, New York
- Date
- 12 May 2022
- Lot
- 29C
- Estimate
- $150,000–200,000
- Sold for
- $15.3 million (including buyer’s premium)
Test your eye on the market: set your estimates
Provenance
1976
Painted by Ernie Barnes as the second of two versions. A handwritten note on the back, dated 9/27/76, calls it an original reproduction of another with the same image, made on special commission, according to Culture Type. Reported
1976 onward
Christie’s lists a Los Angeles private collection that acquired it directly from the artist. Culture Type reports that the Los Angeles attorney Bob Payson bought it after seeing the first version. Reported
1986
Christie’s provenance lists another private collection in Los Angeles. Reported
2018–2021
Shown at the North Carolina Museum of History, the California African American Museum, UTA Artist Space and Andrew Kreps Gallery. Reported
Autumn 2021
Vanity Fair and Culture Type report that it changed hands during the Andrew Kreps Gallery show, and that a new, unnamed owner consigned it to Christie’s. Reported
12 May 2022
Sold at Christie’s New York, lot 29C, to Bill Perkins of Houston for $15,275,000 including fees.
Since 2022
Lent by Bill and Lara Perkins to museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Reported
See it on a wall
Sources
- Christie’s lot page: The Sugar Shack, lot 29C
- Culture Type: Tale of two paintings, Ernie Barnes made two versions of The Sugar Shack
- Culture Type: Famed Sugar Shack painting headed to auction at Christie’s
- The Value: Ernie Barnes, The Sugar Shack at Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale
Prices include the buyer’s premium, in US dollars at the time of sale, unless marked as a hammer price.