“So much of our collection is very deep in certain artists because of a long piece of work that we really empowered,” he says.

The Bidwells commissioned a show by photographer Todd Hido in 2013, for example, titled Excerpts From Silver Meadows. The work evoked the Kent, Ohio, neighborhood where Hido had grown up. On Oct. 11, a unique portfolio of more than 100 chromogenic prints from Silver Meadows will be among several works in the Bidwell collection that will come to auction as a dedicated section within Phillips photographs sale in New York, the auction house announced Monday. The presale estimate for Hido’s works is between US$12,000 and US$18,000, 

Phillips has titled the Bidwell collection “High Voltage” in a nod to the couple’s artistic vision, but also to several striking works in the collection. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s 7-foot-tall Lightning Fields 128, 2009, is literally made from an electric charge generated by the artist in his dark room. That work “is both graphically and literally shocking,” Bidwell says. Its presale estimate is between US$40,000 and US$60,000. 

The sale follows the couple’s gift of the Transformer Station to the Cleveland Museum of Art earlier this year, and signals a transition for the couple, who began collecting photographs soon after they were married in 1991. Fred is on the board of the Cleveland Foundation in addition to the museum, and has made “big commitments” to both, he says, in addition to a variety of other organizations the couple supports. Proceeds from the Phillips auction will fund these philanthropic activities, he says. 

“The idea of taking a small slice of our art collection and putting it up for auction to help expand those efforts was a really attractive way to both keep some wonderful objects in circulation in the world but also to use it to power some causes that we care about in our community,” Bidwell says. 

The couple’s collection originated with their own passion for art and photography. Fred’s love of the medium began in high school; he later got a degree in art history and worked as a commercial photographer by day, and a fine art photographer by night. He turned to advertising as a creative outlet when he realized he couldn’t make a living as an artist. 

At the advertising firm he later led as president, he met Laura, an artist herself. They were both drawn to photography, which they also used daily as a communications tool. Though Laura’s own art practice goes beyond photography as does his interest in art, “we’ve always come back to it for its seductive appeal—the fact that photography is in this constant state of revolution and evolution in a way that no other medium really is,” Bidwell says. 

The couple mutually agree to purchase every piece in their collection, although they do have different tastes. Fred says he’s drawn to abstraction and conceptual images, while Laura is drawn to materials, portraiture, and images with emotional impact. 

“The combination of those two points of view has led to a really interesting diversity in the collection,” Bidwell says. The couple does come together, however, in responding “to the immediacy of photography and how artists have used photography to reflect contemporary issues that are important today.”

An example of this is Dawoud Bey’s 2017 series Night Coming Tenderly, Black, which was commissioned by Front International: Cleveland Triennial for Art, a free, public art exhibition in Cleveland, Akron, and Oberlin that Bidwell founded in 2018. 

Bey’s gelatin silver prints are a study of Lake Erie intended to evoke the experience of formerly enslaved fugitives traveling the Underground Railroad to Canada. The lake would have been the “last obstacle that many escaped slaves encountered,” according to Phillips. The work was among images shown in a 2021 exhibition titled “Dawoud Bey: An American Project,” that was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Art. Untitled #25 (Lake Erie and Sky), from the series, is being sold with an estimated range between US$20,000 and US$30,000. 

“That body of work is sort of a watershed moment in Dawoud Bey’s career,” Bidwell says. “The fact I had the opportunity to work with (him) to realize that project was such an important experience.” 

A series that the Bidwells helped to support before they established the Transformer Station was Andrew Moore’s Detroit Disassembled. It was a “body of work that looked at the destruction and resurrection of Detroit through the ruins of its industrial infrastructure,” Bidwell says. 

The series became a book, traveled to a number of museums, and “virtually every picture from that body of work is part of our collection,” he says. The Rouge, Dearborn, Michigan from Detroit Disassembled, 2008, is being sold at Phillips for an estimate between US$25,000 and US$35,000. 

Being able to work on projects such as these alongside artists became, in some ways, the most important part of collecting for the Bidwells. 

“The objects were incredibly important, obviously, but it’s the relationships that are valuable and, in some ways, that’s how Laura and I have gotten comfortable with the idea of letting go of some of the collection,” Bidwell says. “Those relationships remain no matter where the pictures go.”

For the sale, Phillips chose works by “heavy hitters,” such as Bey and Hank Willis Thomas, whose Baron of the Crossroads, 2012—a stark image of the artist Sanford Biggers as Yoruba deity Elegba rendered in half black, half white—is included with an estimated range between US$25,000 and US$35,000. But Sarah Krueger, Phillips head of photography, says they also included artists who “show the full breadth of what the medium can do.”

The Oct. 11 sale of 40 lots will also include works by Ann Hamilton, Zanele Muholi, Hank Willis Thomas, Kehinde Wiley, and many others. A select offering of additional works will be sold in Phillips’ photographs auction in April, too. 

The sale will leave the Bidwells with plenty of works that they intend to enjoy in their home and lend to institutions. And they’re not done collecting. They may become a little more focused and selective, and they may increasingly look to support local and regional artists in Ohio, reflecting their involvement in the community, Bidwell says. 

“But we’re always open to discovery,” he says. “That’s always been the spirit of our collecting. We’re not interested in going back to find the most valuable trophies of the past; we’re all about discovering what’s new, and when we can, helping the best ideas come to the forefront.”