In the latest effort to raise funds to compensate sexual abuse survivors, the Boy Scouts of America is selling off its entire collection of art.

Currently housed at the Medici Museum of Art in Warren, Ohio, the collection of 321 paintings will be sent to Heritage Auctions’ headquarters in Dallas, Texas, with the auction house set to hold previews this Fall in West Palm Beach, Chicago, and New York City.

An initial group of 25 works will be sold on November 15, both online and in-person in Dallas, with the auction due to continue over the coming years. The collection has been valued at $59 million, though a representative from the auction house said via email that the sale is still being finalized.

The Boy Scouts of America was formed in 1910 to instill patriotism and self-reliance, and its art collection captures much of country’s self-image and myth-making over the past century. Think endless open plains, cowboys, and gleaming cities.

It boasts 59 of the paintings that Norman Rockwell did for the Scouts, including Homecoming, a photorealist work in which a returning scout is greeted by his archetypal 1950s family. In 2019, the Medici Museum of Art was about to show an exhibition of 300 artworks from Boy Scouts of America’s collection, before allegations of child sex abuse led the museum to cancel the show.

J.C. Leyendecker, “Weapons for Liberty, 1018. Photo: courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Another key lot is J.C. Leyendecker’s Weapons for Liberty. Devised as part of a 1918 campaign for war bonds, it shows a Boy Scout offering Columbia an Excalibur-like sword marked with the motto “Be Prepared.”

Elsewhere, paintings by 20th-century American painters, such as Arnold Friberg, Joseph Henry Sharp, and Frank McCarthy, portray the earlier spirit of westward expansion, sometimes depicting the continent’s indigenous peoples. This push fuelled the expansion of the nation’s West Coast cities, as shown in the Los Angeles of Emil Kosa and the San Francisco of James Phillips. There are also three works by Walt Disney included in the collection.

Norman Rockwell, Forward America (1951),. The illustration was made for the Boy Scout calendar. Image courtesy of the Boy Scouts of America.

“We are honored to present this museum-caliber collection, which celebrates the artistry of Norman Rockwell and other luminaries of the Golden Age,” said Aviva Lehmann, the auction houses’ vice president of American Art. “It is undoubtedly one of the most significant collections of Golden Age illustrations to emerge on the market in recent years.”

In 2020, the Boy Scouts filed America’s largest-ever bankruptcy tied to claims of sexual abuse. The settlement plan established a trust that incorporated approximately $2.4 billion in assets. The trust’s duties are to sell assets and review the tens of thousands of sexual abuse claims. The Boy Scouts’ other assets include property, stocks and bonds, and banked cash. To date, it has paid out $25 million to more than 6,800 survivors.

Barbara Houser, the former bankruptcy judge who is supervising the distribution of the funds, welcomed the sale of the collection. “These survivors have waited decades to be heard and acknowledged, and the sale of these works will aid us in providing a measure of justice to them.”