Campbell's Soup Cans Auction History

Created in 1962 and first shown at Ferus Gallery, the set was briefly offered at $100 per canvas before dealer Irving Blum bought back those sales and acquired the entire 32-canvas group for $1,000, paid over installments [3][4].

In 1987 Blum lent the work on a long-term basis to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where it was publicly shown [5].

On October 10, 1996, The Museum of Modern Art announced it had acquired the set as a partial gift/purchase from Blum; Blum has stated the transaction was a partial gift plus $15 million. MoMA lists the work as object no. 476.1996.1–32 in its permanent collection [1][2][6].

No known public auction appearances: This exact 32-canvas set has never been to auction; it moved privately from Warhol to Irving Blum in 1962 and then to The Museum of Modern Art in 1996 as a partial gift/purchase [1][3]. Blum’s decision to keep the paintings together, after briefly selling a few at $100 each, preserved a canonical serial work that embodies Warhol’s strategy of repetition and mass-media imagery [3][4].

1996 MoMA deal as market benchmark: MoMA’s acquisition cemented the set’s institutional status. While MoMA did not disclose the price, Blum has stated the transaction was a partial gift plus $15 million, and contemporaneous analysis in The Economist characterized the deal as setting a new benchmark and signaling Warhol’s canonization in the museum canon [1][6][7]. The placement effectively removed the definitive soup-can ensemble from the market, concentrating collector demand on related single canvases and variants.

Comparable Warhol results: Warhol’s market trajectory since the 1990s underscores the significance of the MoMA acquisition. His Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) realized $195,040,000 at Christie’s in 2022, the auction record for a 20th‑century artwork [8]. Other major sales include Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) (1963) at $105.4m (Sotheby’s, 2013) and Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) (1963) at $71.7m (Christie’s, 2007) [9][10]. For the soup-can theme beyond the MoMA set: Small Torn Campbell’s Soup Can (Pepper Pot) (1962) sold for $11.7m in 2006, and Big Campbell’s Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable) (1962) brought about $27.5m in 2017; historically, a torn-label soup can set a then-record $60,000 in 1970 [11][12][7].

Significance: By anchoring the iconic set at MoMA and establishing a widely cited ~$15m partial purchase component, the 1996 transaction helped frame value expectations for related soup-can works while affirming Warhol’s blue-chip status. The absence of auction comparables for the full set enhances its singular, museum-grade standing and channels market attention to individual canvases and variants [1][6][7].