Appraiser examines Helena's Poindexter art collection, linking it to major artists

Inside the Montana Heritage Center’s Changing Gallery, Helena is looking at more than a museum display. The Poindexter collection of midcentury modern art carries the kind of cultural significance that helps define Montana’s public story, and it may also hold serious market value.

Timothy Gordon, a veteran appraiser with experience on PBS Antiques Roadshow, spent two and a half days examining the collection at the Montana Historical Society. His work focused on the details that determine both meaning and value: each work’s title, artist, medium, condition, dimensions and provenance, followed by research into comparable sales in galleries and private transactions.

That careful review matters because the collection includes works tied to major names in postwar American art, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Franz Kline and Robert De Niro Sr. The Poindexter holdings have been described as 99 works, 98 paintings and one photograph, representing New York School Abstract Expressionism. For Helena, those are not just famous names on labels. They are the kind of works that can change how a museum is insured, stored and interpreted.

The appraisal is unfolding inside a major new institution. The Montana Heritage Center opened in December 2025 after nearly two decades of planning and five years of construction, adding 66,000 square feet to the historic 95,000-square-foot Montana Historical Society building. The expanded campus includes about 30,000 square feet for exhibits, along with the 16,000-square-foot Montana Homeland Gallery, the Charles M. Russell Gallery and other rotating spaces.

The Poindexter story reaches back to New York City, where Elinor Poindexter founded the Poindexter Gallery in 1955. The gallery closed in 1978, but the family’s Montana connection began earlier, when the Poindexters started donating part of the collection to the Montana Historical Society in the early 1960s in honor of George Poindexter’s pioneer forebears. The collection has also traveled beyond Helena, including a 2008 showing at the University of Montana’s Museum of Art and Culture.

Gordon’s assignment goes beyond pricing art. The Montana Historical Society says its collections range from fine art and Indigenous cultural items to archaeological materials and other historical objects, and the appraisal helps place the Poindexter works within that larger public record. Gordon, who described himself as both a collector and a Montanan who values the state’s history, said the pieces are part of a broader historical record that should be preserved for future generations.

For Lewis and Clark County, that means the value is not only what the market might pay. It is also what Helena keeps: a collection important enough to draw expert scrutiny, deepen local interpretation and strengthen the city’s standing as a place where major art history is preserved in public view.