Tribute to Paul Allen…A Great Collector and a Great Rock & Roller!

This month, the estate of the late Paul G. Allen launched a series of three big auctions at Christie’s celebrating first-generation technologies and the brilliant minds behind them. This follows an incredibly successful auction of Allen’s collection in 2022 that raised $1.62 billion– a record-setting sale.

While Paul Allen was mainly known for his contribution to the technology world as the co-founder of Microsoft, as well as being an important art collector, he was also a devoted Rock & Roll fan. In fact, in 2001 Allen opened up the Experience Music Project Museum (now known as the Museum of Pop Culture) in Seattle. Chris Murray of Govinda Gallery had the honor of curating and co-organizing the museum’s inaugural exhibition, along with Chris Phillips from the Experience Music Project. Artist to Icon featured Alfred Wertheimer‘s photographs of Elvis Presley, Daniel Kramer‘s remarkable photographs of Bob Dylan, and Astrid Kirchherr, Max Scheler, and Jürgen Vollmer‘s photographs of the early Beatles. The Experience Music Project ended up acquiring from Govinda Gallery all of the photographs from that exhibition, making it the most important sale Govinda Gallery had made to a museum up to that point. The photographers were delighted!

Hats off to Paul Allen!