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      Donna Summer’s Bedazzled Closet and Ephemera Will Go Up for Auction

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      Eleven years after her death, the disco legend’s family has combed through her possessions, deciding to sell many of her glittering dresses, manuscripts and paintings.For nearly a decade after Donna Summer’s death in 2012, her home in Nashville remained like a shrine to the Queen of Disco’s decades-long music career.Beaded gowns that she had worn onstage remained tucked away along with designer pumps in the upstairs closet; ephemera such as an annotated album cover design for “She Works Hard for the Money” were stored downstairs; and in the basement, there was an accumulation of brightly colored paintings, awards and gold records.Never eager to talk about death, Summer — who died of lung cancer at 63 — had not given directions for what should be done with her possessions, her husband, Bruce Sudano, said recently. It was only in the past few years that Summer’s family was ready to fully comb through her belongings at the Nashville home, many of which will go up for sale at Christie’s next month, the auction house announced Friday.“You’d go into these spaces and it would be almost a time capsule of your life,” said Brooklyn Sudano, one of Summer’s three daughters.One of the items up for sale is a silver goblet that Summer often had onstage with her, filled with caffeine-free Pepsi. Brooklyn Sudano remembered that when she and one of her sisters were on tour with their mother in the 1990s, one of their jobs would be to stir the soda inside the goblet to get rid of any bubbles. (“While she’s singing she can’t be burping,” she explained.)The singer drank flat, caffeine-free Pepsi from this silver goblet during performances, her family said. Christie’s estimates that the cup will sell for between $400 and $600.Courtesy of Christie’sA versatile singer-songwriter whose music spanned funk, dance, rock and gospel, Summer shot to fame in 1975 with the erotic extended cut of “Love to Love You Baby,” followed by the pioneering electronic song “I Feel Love,” whose pulsating club beat can be heard in Beyoncé’s “Summer Renaissance.”The announcement by Christie’s comes shortly before HBO’s release on Saturday of a new family-backed biographical documentary, directed by Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano. Chronicling Summer’s rise from a cast member in a German production of “Hair” to an international superstar, the film, called “Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” is as much about her personal life as her career, discussing her struggles with depression, physical abuse by a boyfriend, and her chapter as a born-again Christian.The auction includes glamorous possessions and others that are more mundane. On the glamorous end: a glittering blue and green dress Summer wore in the music video for her 1983 song “Unconditional Love,” a rhinestone-studded dress and bolero jacket that she wore at a concert in 1995, and a collection of the diva’s sunglasses.As for the mundane — but perhaps intriguing to the most devoted of fans — the sale includes unworn shoes and a dozen unused Louis Vuitton towels.“There are people in the world who love her,” said Bruce Sudano, who is in charge of caring for her estate. “It felt like we can’t just hoard all of this stuff for ourselves.”An early draft of Donna Summer’s 1977 song “Now I Need You,” written by the singer on hotel stationery.Courtesy of Christie’sSummer’s rhinestone-spotted evening dress, worn onstage in 1995, is estimated to sell for between $1,500 and $2,500.Courtesy of Christie’sThe online sale, which Christie’s expects to garner about $200,000 to $300,000, begins on June 15. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Save the Music Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the auction house said.One item, a poster for a 1998 concert supporting the nonprofit Gay Men’s Health Crisis, gestures to the history of Summer’s at times strained relationship with L.G.B.T.Q. fans, many of whom boycotted her music in the ’80s after they had helped to fuel its rise.The documentary briefly addresses that history, with Summer’s husband recounting how an off-the-cuff comment onstage — “God didn’t make Adam and Steve, he made Adam and Eve,” he recalled her saying — deeply hurt many gay fans. Summer worked to repair her relationship with the fan base, especially after New York magazine wrote that she had described the AIDS crisis as a “divine ruling” on gay people, a report she fiercely denied and ultimately sued over.The sale also includes about 15 paintings and manuscripts with scrawled lyrics, including for the 1977 song “Now I Need You,” written on stationery from a hotel in Munich, as well as edits in pencil to the lyrics for the hit “On the Radio.”Brooklyn Sudano scrutinized documents like those while piecing together the HBO film, which she said bolstered her belief that her mother was not a pop star engineered by outside forces, but rather an artist who was deeply involved in creating the hits that made her famous.“People just saw her as this persona,” she said. “I don’t think that they truly understood that she was an artist and had an active role in creating the Donna Summer that people knew.” More

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      Pieces of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s Life Together Head to Auction

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      More than 300 items that belonged to Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward will be sold in June in a series of auctions run by Sotheby’s in New York.Shackles from the film “Cool Hand Luke”; a script from the 1963 comedy “A New Kind of Love”; the wedding dress that Joanne Woodward wore the day she married Paul Newman in 1958.These artifacts, along with some 300 others, tell the story of a union between two of Hollywood’s most enduring film stars that lasted more than a half century. It began in 1953 and lasted until Mr. Newman, a magnetic titan of the screen, died in 2008 at the age of 83. Ms. Woodward, 93, a formidable talent, has kept a private life since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007.The objects will also take on another kind of value later this year, when they are put up for sale in a series of auctions by Sotheby’s. If previous demand for Mr. Newman’s belongings is any measure, the events are likely to be lucrative: A Rolex he owned sold in 2017 for a record $17.8 million. Three years later, another of Mr. Newman’s watches sold for more than $5.4 million.The auctions, which will take place both online and in person in New York, follow the recent release of “The Last Movie Stars,” a six-part HBO Max documentary series directed by Ethan Hawke and based on audio transcripts of interviews with the couple’s friends, colleagues and family members.Mr. Newman’s posthumous memoir, “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man,” was also published last year.Putting a Price Tag on ArtCard 1 of 6Hot commodities. More

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      Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Manuscript Settles in Cleveland

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      The Cleveland Orchestra has been given the autograph score, which was sold at auction to a previously anonymous buyer for $5.6 million.When Gustav Mahler took the New York Philharmonic to Cleveland for a concert in December 1910, he drove the critic Miriam Russell, of The Plain Dealer, to paroxysms of prose:Little Mahler with the big brain.Little Mahler with the mighty force.Little Mahler with the great musical imagination.That, however, was to be his sole appearance there; by the following spring, he was dead.An important piece of Mahleriana will nevertheless now reside in Ohio for good. The Cleveland Orchestra announced today that it has received the manuscript of Mahler’s Second Symphony as a gift. And in doing so, it revealed the identity of the mystery buyer who paid $5.6 million for that autograph score in 2016: Herbert G. Kloiber, an Austrian media mogul.“He’s very much in the family,” André Gremillet, the orchestra’s president and chief executive, said of Kloiber, who is a trustee and chairs its European advisory board. “Given his deep knowledge and love of music, the fact that it’s coming from him has special meaning to us. It’s not just any collector who bought the score.”Kloiber, 74, who built his Tele München Group into a major European media company before selling it to the investment firm KKR in 2019, said that his decision to buy the Mahler manuscript had reflected a lifelong interest in music, as well as a friendship.The godson of the conductor Herbert von Karajan, Kloiber ran the production company Unitel, which made several renowned films of performances, before founding Clasart Classic in 1976. Clasart distributes Met in HD broadcasts internationally, and has made visual recordings of the Clevelanders playing Bruckner and Brahms with their music director, Franz Welser-Möst.It was through his business dealings that Kloiber became acquainted with Gilbert Kaplan, the Mahler devotee who had bought the 232-page manuscript in 1984 from the foundation of Willem Mengelberg, a Dutch conductor who had received it from the composer’s widow, Alma. Kaplan, a financial publisher with no musical training, was obsessed with the “Resurrection,” as the work is known, and controversially conducted it with leading orchestras, recording it twice.“We had both sold a piece of our companies to Capital Cities, the owner of the ABC network, so every year we gathered in Phoenix, Arizona, at the Biltmore Hotel for a corporate retreat,” Kloiber said. “Whilst everybody else was doing horse routes or playing golf, we were sitting at the bar talking about Gustav Mahler, and his particular inclination to the Second Symphony.”The score is unaltered, unbound and marked in blue crayon with Mahler’s own edits.David A. Brichford, the Cleveland Museum of ArtWhen Kaplan died in 2016, he left the manuscript to his widow with the intention that it be sold. Kloiber’s winning bid at Sotheby’s that November set a record for a manuscript score at auction. The acquisition was anonymous, but not entirely a secret.“We agreed to have a coffee in Vienna,” Welser-Möst said, recalling a meeting from a few years ago with Kloiber, a friend. “I knew he had bought it, but that was it. He showed up with a black briefcase. We sat down for coffee — you know, chatty, chatty — and it was like in one of those spy films. He pushed the briefcase underneath the table and said, ‘Have a look at it.’”For Welser-Möst, who occupied Mahler’s post of general music director at the Vienna State Opera from 2010 to 2014, examining the pristinely preserved manuscript — unaltered, unbound and marked in blue crayon with the composer’s own edits — was an emotional experience, not to mention a nerve-racking one. The clarity of Mahler’s handwriting convinced him, he said, that his scores ought to be followed to the letter.“When I opened the score in our apartment in Vienna, I got really teary,” Welser-Möst said. “How close can you get to a masterpiece, whatever it is? You can’t get any closer than that, and to have that intimate moment just for myself, not being in a museum and pushing other people to the side to get a glimpse of it, that was really a very special moment in my life.”He hid the manuscript under his bed, then returned it three days later.Kloiber, who admires the Cleveland Orchestra’s commitment to its youth programs and has been a board member since 2010, told officials that he would give them the manuscript in 2019, after a Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra concert at St. Florian, the abbey near Linz, Austria, where Bruckner was organist.“They are a lovely lot,” Kloiber said. “I like the way they are run and come on all these tours, and make a really big effort for the United States to be present on the European concert circuit.”Selections from the manuscript will be displayed at Severance Hall in a free public showing on Wednesday, and for ticket holders at the orchestra’s season-opening performances of the “Resurrection” on Thursday and Friday. The score will then be housed nearby at the Cleveland Museum of Art, which is led by William M. Griswold, the former director of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, where several of Mahler’s other manuscripts are held.“It will be kept permanently at the museum,” Gremillet said. “We are still working on where it will be exhibited, but we want people to see that score. Certainly this is going to be a great source of pride for Cleveland as a whole, in addition to the Cleveland Orchestra.” More

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      Frank Miller Sues Widow of Comics Magazine Editor for the Return of Artworks

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      Two of Miller’s original drawings that were used in 1980s issues of David Anthony Kraft’s magazine Comics Interview were gifts, Kraft’s wife says. Miller says they were not.The comic writer and artist Frank Miller is suing the widow and the estate of a comics magazine founder over two pieces of promotional art he created that she was trying to sell at auction. The art, which appeared on covers of David Anthony Kraft’s magazine Comics Interview in the 1980s, includes an early depiction of Batman and a female Robin — from the 1986 The Dark Knight Returns series — and is potentially a valuable collectible.The lawsuit seeks the return of the Batman piece, which was used on the cover of Comics Interview No. 31 in 1986, as well as art depicting the title character of Miller’s 1983 Ronin series. He had sent both to Kraft for his use in the publication; the Ronin artwork was used as the cover of Comics Interview No. 2 in 1983. Miller contended in the court papers that he and Kraft agreed they were on loan, citing “custom and usage in the trade at the time,” and that he made repeated requests for their return.But Kraft’s widow, Jennifer Bush-Kraft, disagreed with Miller’s assertions. “My husband kept all his correspondence,” she said in a phone interview. “When I say all of it, I don’t know if you can comprehend the level of meticulousness. He bound all of this correspondence by year, by name and in alphabetical order by company.”When the question was raised about demands before 2022 to return the artwork, she said, she searched her husband’s files and found no such requests.Silenn Thomas, the chief executive of Frank Miller Ink, said in an email that Miller would not comment on the ongoing legal matter. The lawsuit, which was first reported by Law360, was filed on Monday in the Gainesville division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.Bush-Kraft said she believed that Miller had gifted the art to Kraft. “If it was not given, David would have given it back,” she said. (Another promotional piece by Miller, for his Sin City comic, was used by Kraft in the 1990s, and was returned, he said in the lawsuit.)“He wouldn’t have ruined the relationship with someone he would potentially work with in the future,” she continued. “He certainly wouldn’t have ruined his relationship” with DC Comics, which published The Dark Knight Returns and Ronin. The art was created for promotional use, she said, and it was common practice for Kraft to keep those types of pieces.The dispute started in the spring, and in May, a lawyer for Miller sent a cease-and-desist letter after Miller learned of a potential sale of the works on Comic Connect, an online auction house devoted to comics and pop culture memorabilia, saying he had given them to Kraft as a loan and expected their return after a period of time.A lawyer representing Metropolis Collectibles, a sister company of Comic Connect, wrote in response that “the actual, relevant ‘custom in the trade at the time’ was that comic artists would give — not loan — artworks to Mr. Kraft and other comic publishers in the hopes that publishers such as Mr. Kraft would use the artwork in their publications and thereby provide publicity and exposure to the artist and their work.” The lawyer also wrote that because Miller was only just now demanding the artwork be returned, decades later, his request might be untimely because of the expiration of the statute of limitations and under other theories.But Miller, in the court filing, wrote that he and his publisher had sought the return of the works directly and indirectly since the 1980s, and that they believed the works were lost. Miller is seeking damages for the value of the works “in an amount, exceeding $75,000, to be determined at trial.”The sale of the artwork could be lucrative: In June, the cover of Issue No. 1 of The Dark Knight Returns was auctioned for $2.4 million. In 2011, a page from Issue No. 3 of the series that showed the older Batman and Carrie Kelley — then a new, female Robin — mid-leap over the Gotham City skyline, sold for $448,125.“I can’t afford to go to court and I can’t afford not to go to court,” Bush-Kraft said. “I’m just one person. I’m not Frank Miller. I don’t have a company.”Currently, neither Miller nor Bush-Kraft is in possession of the art; Bush-Kraft had given it to Comic Connect ahead of the auction, which had been planned for June. (Both works were pulled from the auction before it started.)“We will let the court decide who owns the pieces, and in the meantime we are retaining possession,” said Stephen Fishler, the chief executive of Comic Connect and Metropolis Collectibles. More

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      A Rapper’s Delight: Hip-Hop Memorabilia Goes Up for Auction

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      Original vinyl records, turntables and other ephemera belonging to the hip-hop pioneer D.J. Kool Herc will be included in a sale at Christie’s.In the 1970s, D.J. Kool Herc and his sister Cindy Campbell were famous for throwing parties in the rec room of their Bronx high-rise at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, which became known as the “birthplace of hip-hop.”Now some of the original vinyl records and turntables from those neighborhood jams, and other memorabilia, will be auctioned online in a sale organized by Christie’s with Payal Arts International, a consultancy practice.The sale, from Aug. 4 through Aug. 18, represents a larger effort by Christie’s to reach out to a broader population of clients and collectors. An exhibition of the more than 200 items included in the sale will be open to the public at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries from Aug. 5 to Aug. 12, as part of Hip-Hop Recognition Month in New York City.Up for auction are some of the turntables and original vinyl records from the parties Herc and his sister Cindy threw at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. Christie’s Images Ltd. 2022.“For far too long, our country has neglected to celebrate the contributions of Black Americans to the extent that is deserved,” Darius Himes, Christie’s international head of photographs, said in a statement. “The spirit of the parties that Herc and Cindy would throw were always about inclusion — people from all races and cultures across New York’s many neighborhoods would come to hear the best new music played loudly on Herc’s famous sound system.“From the depths of Planet Rock, a.k.a. the Bronx — came a fire and energy that first captivated the 5 boroughs, and then permeated every facet of the globe,” Himes added. “There isn’t a country today whose youth haven’t been influenced by this movement. And it all started here, in New York City, by a talented Black American with very few resources.”The sale will include disco balls, shoes, hats, belt buckles and jewelry of that pioneering period, as well as Polaroids of Herc and friends, and numerous awards.“At our parties in 1970s New York, it was about something that was bigger than ourselves,” Herc, whose real name is Clive Campbell, said in a statement. “Hip-hop is both an American immigrant story and a global story — it belongs to everybody. And we can still see and feel it today.” More

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      Madonna and Beeple Collaborate on NFT Project

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      The pop singer spent the last year working with the digital artist on a video series about motherhood. Proceeds will benefit three nonprofits.Has Madonna embraced the blockchain?The pop superstar’s interest in NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, caught some fans off guard in March, when she paid 180 ether, a digital currency worth $560,000 at the time, for an NFT of a tattooed ape from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of digital art.On Monday, the singer released her own NFT series, titled “Mother of Creation” — three digitally rendered videos that recast her as a nude woman giving birth to flora, fauna and technology. The artworks are the result of a yearlong collaboration with Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple.“This is such an absolute, insane honor,” said Winkelmann, who is known for selling an NFT in 2021 for $69 million at Christie’s. “I don’t do many collaborations. This is probably the only one I will do for a very long time.”From Wednesday through Friday, Madonna and Beeple’s NFTs will be auctioned for charity through the online marketplace SuperRare.“It’s counterintuitive to who I am,” Madonna said in a phone interview, explaining that her initial struggle with the concept of digital assets made her want to explore what she saw as the elements of faith and community that drive the NFT market.From there, Beeple and Madonna developed three videos in which audiences have a full-frontal view of Madonna’s avatar giving birth to different organisms from a hospital bed, a rusted vehicle, and a forest floor. The singer has paired each video with poetry — some her own and some by the mystic poet Rumi.“I never want to be provocative just for the sake of provocation,” said Madonna, insisting that the butterflies and centipedes she gives birth to in the video mean something. “They stand for hope. They stand for technology.”Proceeds from the NFTs will benefit three nonprofits supporting women and children: the Voices of Children Foundation, which cares for those affected by the war in Ukraine; the City of Joy Foundation, which helps survivors of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Black Mama’s Bail Out, which provides bail for incarcerated caregivers.The charity auction comes at a time when the NFT market’s future remains uncertain.John Crain, a founder and chief executive of SuperRare, said that his company did $10 million in sales last month compared to a $35 million high set in October. He sees the discrepancy not as a sign of the NFT market’s demise but of its maturation.“It’s been a frothy year, but marketplaces are inherently volatile,” Crain said. “There are fluctuations, but I wouldn’t call it a bear market.” More

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      A Violin From Hollywood’s Golden Age Aims at an Auction Record

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      Played in “The Wizard of Oz” and other classic films, Toscha Seidel’s Stradivarius could sell for almost $20 million.Rare violins once owned by famed virtuosos like Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz and Yehudi Menuhin have sold privately in recent years for up to $20 million. The instruments they played typically bear their names, like the “Earl of Plymouth” Stradivarius, which to burnish its reputation, mystique and market value is now also referred to as the “ex-Kreisler.”Can Toscha Seidel work the same marketing magic — even though his fame came mostly from Hollywood rather than the concert hall?Musicians and collectors will know soon. After a global tour currently underway, the violin Seidel owned and played, the “da Vinci” Stradivarius from 1714, will be sold by the online auction house Tarisio, from May 18 through June 9. It is the first Stradivarius from the so-called golden age of violin making to be auctioned in decades.Unlike most musical instruments, over time all Stradivarius violins have acquired names, some rather fanciful, like “the Sleeping Beauty.” The famed virtuoso Paganini called his “Il Canone.” The “da Vinci” has no connection to Leonardo. As a marketing tactic, a dealer who sold three Stradivarius violins in the 1920s named them all after famous Renaissance painters: in addition to the “da Vinci,” the “Titian” and the “Michaelangelo.”The violin itself is naturally the most important factor in determining its value, with instruments made by the Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri families of Renaissance Italy commanding the highest prices. Condition is another crucial consideration. But so, too, is the identity of its prior owners — its provenance.Toscha Seidel, right, in 1918.Genthe photograph collection/Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs DivisionFew may recognize Seidel’s name today. But he was so successful by the 1920s that he was able to buy the “da Vinci” for $25,000 (over $400,000 today), a sale featured on the front page of The New York Times on April 27, 1924. Seidel said at the time he wouldn’t trade the violin “for a million dollars” and considered it his most treasured possession, adding, “The tone is of outstanding power and beauty.”Seidel was so well known in his heyday that George and Ira Gershwin wrote a comic song about him and three of his Russian Jewish peers: “Mischa, Sasha, Toscha, Jascha.” (“We are four fiddlers three.”) Seidel and Heifetz were both born in Ukraine; both studied in St. Petersburg with the eminent teacher Leopold Auer; and both emigrated to the United States after the upheavals of the Russian Revolution. They made their concert debuts at Carnegie Hall within months of each other, to critical acclaim.Albert Einstein took violin lessons from Seidel, and together they performed Bach’s Double Concerto for a fund-raiser. They sported thick shocks of unruly hair that reinforced the caricature of the long-haired musician, like Liszt.Both Seidel and Heifetz settled in Los Angeles, where the burgeoning movie industry paved the way for Seidel’s success. By the 1930s, he was surrounded there by a crowd of mostly Jewish exiles from Nazi Germany and war-torn Europe. Among them were the composers Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.Seidel played the principal violin part in many of Korngold’s celebrated film scores, which included “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (for which Korngold won an Academy Award) and “Anthony Adverse” (ditto). The two men recorded a violin and piano arrangement of Korngold’s suite for “Much Ado About Nothing,” with the composer at the piano.Music directors and composers sought out Seidel’s warm, rich tone. He was the concertmaster for the Paramount Studio Orchestra and played the violin solos for MGM’s “The Wizard of Oz” and David Selznick’s “Intermezzo,” in which a famed violinist (played by Leslie Howard) falls in love with his accompanist (Ingrid Bergman).“That we largely associate love scenes or depictions of the less fortunate in films — or any scene evoking tears or strong emotions — with the sound of the violin is largely due to Seidel,” Adam Baer, a violinist and journalist, in a 2017 article for The American Scholar. (Baer’s violin teacher studied with Seidel and insisted that his pupils listen to recordings of Seidel performances.)Seidel’s violin playing was sought out for its warm, rich tone.Andrew White for The New York TimesThough best known for his movie work, Seidel also played standard classical repertoire, soloing with orchestras and touring in recital. In the 1930s, he was heard by millions of radio listeners as the musical director and a frequent soloist with CBS’s symphony orchestra. In 1934 he had his own weekly broadcast on the network, “The Toscha Seidel Program.” (Several recordings showcasing his lush sound are on YouTube, including a 1945 recording of Chausson’s “Poème” with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra led by Leopold Stokowski.)“He was a singing violinist, influenced by the cantorial tradition,” Baer said in an interview. “He played with as much depth of tone and emotional intensity as anyone I’ve heard on disk.”But Seidel never achieved Heifetz’s enduring international fame. In Los Angeles, Heifetz often called on Seidel to play with him in string quartets, literally assuming the role of second fiddle.As the golden age of Hollywood faded, the studios abandoned their in-house orchestras, relying instead on freelancers. And as he aged, Seidel developed a neurological condition that gradually diminished his playing. This once-eminent violinist ended up in a pit orchestra in Las Vegas before retiring to an avocado farm in California. He died in 1962, at 62, with his violin by far his most valuable possession.That violin last sold at auction in London in 1974 for 34,000 pounds (over $3 million today). It is currently owned by the Japanese restaurant chain magnate Tokuji Munetsugu, who has amassed a collection of rare string instruments and sponsors an international violin competition in Japan. (Munetsugu, 73, has not said why he is selling it.)Film music has been making its way into concert halls, and the “Star Wars” and “Jaws” composer John Williams is arguably the most popular living American composer. But movie scores and their mostly anonymous players have long been largely shunned by the classical music elite.Could the “da Vinci” sale nevertheless set a record?The “Lady Blunt” Stradivarius, once owned by the granddaughter of Lord Byron, holds the current record for a violin sold at auction. (Its 2011 sale, for $15.9 million, was also handled by Tarisio.) Like the “Messiah” Stradivarius now owned by the British Museum, the “Lady Blunt” was hardly ever played, and remains in pristine condition.Carlos Tome, a violinist and a co-owner of Tarisio, said the auction house has not published an estimate for the “da Vinci.” Citing its rarity — a Stradivarius from the golden period — its fine condition and its “unique Hollywood provenance,” he said he expects it to sell in the $15 million to $20 million range.“It could set a record,” he said, noting the emergence of a class of wealthy collectors since the sale of the “Lady Blunt” a decade ago. (Other dealers say there have since been multiple private sales at prices over $20 million.)Baer dismissed the notion that the Hollywood pedigree of the “da Vinci” might curb its value at auction. While he conceded Seidel did not record the most intellectually rigorous music, he added that “the fact he was a Hollywood performer shouldn’t diminish the value at all.”“He was a great classical musician before he came to Hollywood,” Baer added. “And ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is a pretty big deal.” More

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      Christopher Coover, Auction Expert in the Printed Word, Dies at 72

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      At Christie’s, he managed sales of rare books, manuscripts and documents by the likes of da Vinci, Lincoln and Kerouac. On TV, he lent his eye to “Antiques Roadshow.”Christopher Coover, who made a career out of reading other people’s mail as an expert in rare books and manuscripts at Christie’s Auction House, where he oversaw the authentication, appraisal and sale of documents ranging from the original texts of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” to George Washington’s annotated copy of the Constitution, died in Livingston, N.J., on April 3, his 72nd birthday.The immediate cause was pneumonia complicated by Parkinson’s disease, his son, Timothy, said.As a connoisseur of curios, Mr. Coover was enlisted as an appraiser for the PBS program “Antiques Roadshow,” where at a single glance he could transform an all-but-forgotten autographed book or letter, retrieved from a starry-eyed guest’s basement or attic into a valuable historical heirloom.“The sense of discovery never fails,” he told The Colonial Williamsburg Journal in 2011. “I like the challenge of seeking out the larger background, the hidden meanings and connections of a given document. This means I am sometimes overworked, occasionally out of my depth, but never bored.”Mr. Coover in 2004 with letter from Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant. “The historical nuggets in original manuscripts are often buried, but rarely deeply,” he said. Ruby Washington/The New York Times)For 35 years as senior specialist in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department at Christie’s in Manhattan, he would authenticate material offered for auction, describe its provenance and history for the catalog, and suggest the opening price.Among his career milestones was assisting in the sale of the oil magnate Armand Hammer’s copy of an early 15th-century scientific manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci — known as the “Hammer Codex” — to Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, for a record $30.2 million in 1994.Mr. Coover appraised and managed the sale of the publisher Malcolm Forbes’s collection of American historical documents in six auctions from 2002 to 2007. The sale set records for letters by 15 presidents and generated more than $40.9 million. The sale’s catalog included a manuscript of Abraham Lincoln’s last speech; Robert E. Lee’s message to Ulysses S. Grant, in which he said he was ready to discuss the “cessation of hostilities” to end the Civil War; and a 1939 letter from Albert Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraging the American effort to build the atomic bomb.Mr. Coover also wrote the catalog for the sale of Kerouac’s “On the Road” manuscript, typed on a 119-foot-long roll of United Press Teletype paper ($2.4 million); and appraised and managed the sales of Lincoln’s 1864 Election Victory speech ($3.4 million), Washington’s letter on the ratification of the Constitution ($3.2 million), Washington’s personal annotated copy of the 1789 Acts of Congress ($9.8 million) and the original manuscript of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”Christopher Coover was born on April 3, 1950, in Greeley, Colo. His parents left his middle name blank on his birth certificate so that he could choose one later himself. He selected Robin, from his favorite childhood books; his full name became Christopher Robin Coover.The family moved shortly afterward to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where his parents were hired by Vassar College — his father, James Burrell Coover, as a professor and music librarian, and his mother, Georgena (Walker) Coover, as a teacher and specialist in early childhood education.Chris attended Arlington High School in Poughkeepsie before his father took a teaching post at the State University of New York at Buffalo, bringing his family with him. Chris graduated from Kenmore West High School in Buffalo. He earned a bachelor’s degree in musicology from SUNY Buffalo in 1973.He subsequently formed a band that played at weddings and other receptions, drove a school bus, worked for The New Grove Dictionary of Music in London and in the rare books room of the Strand book store in Manhattan before he was hired by Sotheby’s in 1978.He left for Christie’s in 1980. While working there, he earned a master’s in library science from Columbia University. He retired in 2016 as senior specialist and vice president of the auction house.Mr. Coover also lectured on American documents and built his own collection of literary and historical books and manuscripts, which he donated to Columbia.Mr. Coover, who died in a hospital, lived in Montclair, N.J. In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife, Lois (Adams) Coover; a daughter, Chloe; and two sisters, Mauri and Regan Coover.In the authentication of documents, Mr. Coover said, most forgeries are readily apparent, typically because the paper cannot be faked. Such was the case with a supposed 1906 first edition of “Madame Butterfly,” purportedly signed and dedicated by the composer, Puccini, which a reader of The Chicago Tribune asked Mr. Coover to authenticate.Sight unseen, he was able to recite the dedication, in Italian (he said he had seen 10 to 15 copies of the score with the same words), and identified the reader’s find as only a photolithographic copy.Then again, he said, ordinary-looking documents can contain surprises.“An otherwise boring diary or series of family letters mainly recording weather and local news may contain a long description of an election campaign, demonstrations against the Stamp Act, the convening of the Confederacy to draft a constitution, or a raid by Pancho Villa,” he told the Williamsburg journal.“The historical nuggets in original manuscripts are often buried, but rarely deeply,” he added. “I once discovered an exceptional letter of Ethan Allen at the bottom of a pile of old deeds, copies of minor poetry and otherwise uninteresting papers.”Assessing the monetary value of an item is highly subjective, he said.“Family bibles and birth and death records are valuable for their genealogical information, but they have very little commercial value,” he was quoted as saying in Marsha Bemko’s book “Antiques Roadshow: Behind the Scenes” (2009), “and I think it is a shame to see little old ladies waiting in line for hours while hefting a 40-pound Bible that is worth very little monetarily.”“You have to trust your innate instincts and perception of the size of the potential market,” he said. “The value of some letters and documents can only be determined by letting the free market operate, at auction.”Mr. Coover recalled that in 1992 he was asked by the grandson of a woman who had recently died to appraise her collection of books. He visited her Manhattan apartment and immediately realized that the books were not very valuable, but as he was leaving, the grandson asked him to look at some papers in a tattered Manila envelope.Inside, Mr. Coover told The Times in 2004, he found an old black leather book with the word “autograph” embossed in gold on the cover. On the very first page, he recognized Lincoln’s signature, followed by the last handwritten paragraph of his Second Inaugural Address. He told the young man that that one page alone was worth at least $250,000. When it finally went to auction, it sold for $1.2 million. More