Paul Allen’s personal art collection will be offered at Christie’s Rockefeller Center in November in a historic sale that is valued in excess of $1 billion, the auction house announced.
The auction will include more than 150 masterpieces spanning 500 years of art history, which are part of the celebrated collection built by Microsoft’s late co-founder.
According to experts “Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection” will become the largest auction sale in history, with Paul Cézanne’s “La Montagne Sainte-Victoire,” projected to break the $100 million barrier as the top selling artwork.
According to Christie’s, the collection “reflects the depth and range of Mr. Allen’s collecting, which is unlike anything that has come before, connecting a visionary innovator and the ground-breaking artists he collected”.
Owner of NFL team Seattle Seahawks and NBA team Portland Trailblazers, Allen died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2018 at the age of 65.
“The inspirational figure of Paul Allen, the extraordinary quality and diversity of works, and the dedication of all proceeds to philanthropy, create a unique combination that will make the sale of the Paul G. Allen Collection an event of unprecedented magnitude,” said Christie’s CEO, Guillaume Cerutti.
An avid art collector for decades, Allen began publicly sharing pieces from his collection in the late 1990s through dozens of often anonymous loans to museums around the world.
In addition, he mounted exhibitions that shared highlights of his collection with the public, including the renowned Seeing Nature exhibit in 2016 that toured nationally.
Click here for Christie’s full overview
