Locksley Shea Gallery: The Minneapolis Home That Sold Warhol

The Locksley Shea Gallery sold Warhol, Judd, Kelly and Marden out of a Minneapolis home in the 1960s and 1970s. Here is its history, its tie to Dayton's Gallery 12, and what the gallery's name means on your piece.

SebastianCharles Auctions

In the 1960s and 1970s, some of the most important art in America passed through a private home in Minneapolis. The Locksley Shea Gallery showed Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly and Brice Marden, and its owners threw parties people still talk about. If you find the gallery's name on the back of a work or in its paperwork, you are holding a piece of one of the boldest chapters in Minnesota art. You will sometimes see the name spelled Locksley Shay. The correct spelling is Shea.

A hairdresser and a professor

Gordon Locksley was born in Chicago in 1930 and came to Minneapolis in the early 1950s. In 1954 he met George T. Shea, an associate professor of Japanese language and literature at the University of Minnesota. The two ran the Red Carpet beauty salon, which served some of the city's wealthiest clients, and a beauty college.

Locksley started selling prints out of the salon. By the mid 1960s he had turned that sideline into a serious art business, and the pair opened the Locksley Shea Gallery in their home in the Kenwood neighborhood.

The artists they showed

Locksley had an eye for artists before the market caught up with them. The gallery showed and sold:

• Andy Warhol, including a 1975 solo show. That year Warhol painted Portraits of the Locksley Shea Gallery, and the portraits hung in the show.
• Donald Judd
• Brice Marden
• Ellsworth Kelly
• Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein
• Christo and Robert Rauschenberg, who came to the opening night parties for their shows

Locksley bought for himself too. Sotheby's lists the Locksley Shea Gallery as the first owner of Warhol's Large Campbell's Soup Can, acquired from the artist around 1965. When that painting came up at Sotheby's London in 2016, its estimate was £4.5 million to £6.5 million.

The Dayton's connection

Locksley Shea was not the only place in Minneapolis selling cutting edge art. Dayton's Gallery 12, on the top floor of the downtown department store, showed many of the same artists. When Gallery 12 closed in 1975, some of its works went to Locksley Shea.

One of them made headlines this year. Sanyu's painting Beijing Circus was first owned by Dayton's Gallery 12. In 1976, as Locksley and Shea prepared to move to Europe, it was offered at the estate sale of their home. The collector who consigned it decades later first saw it at that sale. It sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong in March 2026 for HK$47.26 million, about $6 million. You can read more about Gallery 12 in our post on Dayton's Gallery 12 and the artists it sold.

Leaving Minneapolis

In the mid 1970s Locksley and Shea left for Europe and lived in Rome, Cannes and Paris. Locksley came back to the United States in 1994 and later settled in Fort Lauderdale. He died there in 2014 at 83.

They never cut their ties to Minneapolis. In 2006 they lent ten major works to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, including Warhol's Portraits of the Locksley Shea Gallery, Lichtenstein's ART, Oldenburg's Cash Register, Marden's Flesh, Kelly's Two Panels: Red White and a Judd floor box. Locksley credited the museum's support with keeping the gallery alive.

What their collection sold for

Bonhams sold The Collection of Gordon Locksley & George T. Shea in New York on July 31, 2024. The sale brought $690,500, and 27 of its 30 lots sold.

• Andy Warhol, Portrait of Locksley Shea Gallery, 1975: $279,900.
• Andy Warhol, Untitled (Male Nude), 1984: $43,500, almost three times its low estimate.
• Brice Marden, Flesh (Back Series), 1967, estimated at $500,000 to $700,000, did not sell.

Those results show how the market treats this name. The gallery's history makes bidders pay attention, but the artist and the work still set the price.

What to look for on your piece

Gallery labels and invoices

Check the back of the frame, the stretcher bars and any paperwork for the gallery's name. Major auction houses list "Locksley Shea Gallery, Minneapolis" in provenance, so a label or receipt with that name carries weight. Keep it with the work and take a photo of it.

The artist comes first

Locksley got his start selling prints, so not everything that passed through the gallery is a major painting. Identify the artist and the medium first. A signed print by an artist the gallery showed can be worth real money. Our prints department handles both editions and originals.

Family stories count

If someone in your family bought art in Minneapolis in the 1960s or 1970s, ask what they remember. A note saying where and when a piece was bought, written by the person who bought it, helps document its history.

Selling a piece from Locksley Shea

If you have art with a Locksley Shea Gallery label or a family story behind it, send us photos of the front, the back and any signature or label. Sebastian personally reviews every inquiry. You can see what we have sold on our auction highlights page, and you can request an estimate here.