Sotheby's To Auction Hair Salon Owner's $30 Million African Art

Myron Kunin had an eye for beauty. He built his parents’ department store hair salons in Minneapolis into a global company that included Supercuts, Vidal Sassoon and Jean-Louis David.

Kunin, the founder of Regis Corp. who died last year at 85, also amassed a collection of African art valued at $20 million to $30 million that Sotheby’s will auction Nov. 11 in New York, the biggest estimate ever for an African art sale in the U.S.

Works include a statue previously owned by Pablo Picasso and an Ivory Coast figure estimated at more than $5 million. The most expensive work of tribal art at auction was a Fang mask from Gabon that sold for 5.9 million euros ($7.6 million) at Drouot auction house in France in 2006.

Prices for African and Oceanic art have surged with the rally in art markets, boosted by new buyers including contemporary-art collectors, the Louvre Abu Dhabi and members of the royal family of Qatar. Sotheby’s sales in this category were up 14 percent to $41.7 million in 2013 as the number of buyers grew by 71 percent from the previous year, the New York-based auction house said. During the first half this year, about half of bidders in the African art auctions were new, Sotheby’s said.

“It’s the only field aside from contemporary art where you have a great number of masterpieces still in private hands,” said Heinrich Schweizer, head of Sotheby’s African and Oceanic Art department. “You can buy a great piece for about $1 million and a very, very good piece for $100,000.”

10,000 Salons

Kunin, who expanded Regis into a publicly traded business that now owns or licenses 10,000 salons, also collected American art, European Old Masters, and Russian and 19th-century paintings. Many of the artworks were displayed throughout the nine-story headquarters of the Minneapolis-based company, including in some employees’ offices, Schweizer said.

“He told me, ‘This way ensures I see all of my employees,’” Schweizer said.

In 1958, Kunin bought his parents’ small group of department store-based salons, which began as a barber shop by his Russian immigrant father, and changed the name to Regis. He expanded into free-standing stores in shopping malls and later made acquisitions in the United Kingdom and Europe, according to the company. Regis reported revenue of $1.9 billion for the 12 months ended June 30. Kunin was chief executive officer until 1996 and vice chairman until 2008.