Achieving $1.5 billion in a single evening, Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection is the biggest sale in auction history

In a single evening on 9 November 2022, the Paul G. Allen collection surpassed $1 billion and became the most valuable private collection of all time. Fueled by record-breaking masterworks spanning 500 years of art history, from Botticelli to Georges Seurat and David Hockney, the historic series of sales continued with an offering of seven works in the 20th and 21st Century Art auctions in May 2023. All of the Estate’s proceeds, totalling over $1.7 billion, went to philanthropy, following the wishes of the late philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder.

Paul G. Allen’s collecting legacy returns to Christie’s in the fall of 2024, with a series of three auctions featuring objects that changed science and technology forever, including Albert Einstein’s famous letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ed White’s spacesuit from Project Gemini. Discover Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection.

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