Photography by Charles Davis Smith
Keijsers Koning will present Goodbyes Are Not Forever, a major estate sale of works from the late Charles Dee Mitchell, on view May 9 through May 23, 2026. Organized in collaboration with his collection manager Temple Shipley, the sale brings together approximately 300 artworks assembled over more than four decades, offering a broad view of Mitchell’s sustained engagement with Texas regional art alongside contemporary practices in drawing, sculpture, and photography.
Mitchell was known not only as a collector but as a critic, curator, and advocate for artists. Throughout his career, he contributed interviews, lectures, and writing that helped shape conversations around contemporary art in Texas and beyond. The presentation includes ephemera from his professional life, including publications featuring his criticism, giving further context to the ideas that informed his collecting.
What emerges most clearly from the collection is its continuity. As Temple Shipley notes, Mitchell “never stopped collecting—right up until the end of his life, he was still thinking about art and acquiring work.” That sustained engagement was not episodic but embedded in daily life. “Art was part of a daily rhythm for him, much like reading,” she says, describing a practice that moved fluidly between fiction, criticism, artist books, and monographs. “That same intellectual appetite carried over into how he engaged with art… it was something he returned to consistently, something that was genuinely nourishing to him.”
The sale reflects the way Mitchell lived with art. Works are often installed in pairs or small groupings, echoing his habit of creating visual dialogues across artists and mediums. Rather than isolating individual pieces, the presentation emphasizes relationships. “Dee was a curator at heart,” Shipley says. “He had a strong ability to place artists in dialogue and to create context through juxtaposition.” In that sense, the cohesion of the collection becomes more representative than any single work.
Highlights include works by Robert Adams, Brian Belott, Eric Bainbridge, Carl Block, Richard Bozeman, Madeline Donahue, Austin Eddy, Joel Fisher, Lonnie Holley, Kevin McNamee-Tweed, Michael Schmidt, Jim Shaw, Allison Schulnik, Deb Sokolow, Richard Tuttle, and E.B. Watson. Many of these artists are also represented in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, underscoring the depth of Mitchell’s long-term engagement with the field.
For years, Mitchell hosted informal New Year’s Day gatherings at his homes in the Hollywood Hills and later in Lakewood, where works from his collection were rotated regularly. These occasions brought together artists, writers, and friends, turning the home into an evolving exhibition space. That sensibility carries through here, where visitors are encouraged to consider how works might exist in relation to one another rather than as standalone acquisitions.
The accessibility of the sale reflects the conditions under which the collection was built. “I wouldn’t frame it as a deliberate pricing strategy so much as a reflection of how Dee collected,” Shipley explains. Focused on supporting artists, often early in their careers, Mitchell acquired work consistently and at a range of price points that now read as accessible relative to the current market.
The inclusion of ephemera adds another layer to the presentation. Mitchell initially came to art through writing, with early ambitions as a film critic before turning to art criticism. “His writing and the artworks are closely intertwined,” Shipley says. “Showing one without the other risks missing how he actually understood and experienced art.” For Mitchell, collecting was not separate from thinking or writing, but an extension of it. In the years following his death, artists have underscored the importance of that engagement. “Many reached out to share that he had covered their exhibitions, often early on,” she notes. “That kind of attention carries weight—it signals that the work is being taken seriously.”
Proceeds from the sale will benefit several institutions and organizations supported by Mitchell during his lifetime, including the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. A significant portion of the collection, nearly twice the number of works included in the sale, will be gifted to the Dallas Museum of Art and is not part of the current presentation.
That longer horizon shapes how the collection is understood. “These objects often outlive their collectors,” Shipley says. “That’s a simple fact, but it has real implications.” Having worked with the collection for over a decade, she frames this moment not as an endpoint but as part of a longer trajectory, one that raises questions about how collections are built, sustained, and understood over time.
For visitors unfamiliar with Mitchell, the exhibition offers a clear entry point into that way of thinking. “You don’t need institutional validation or significant capital to build something meaningful,” Shipley says. “What you need is clarity, consistency, and time.” The collection, she adds, “is greater than the sum of its parts… it’s the relationships between them—the accumulation of thought and intention over time—that gives it its strength.”
Goodbyes Are Not Forever ultimately presents the collection as Mitchell lived with it: active, evolving, and shaped by attention.