Rago Arts and Auction Center
March 10
Folk art three-panel screen from Vancroft Lodge, W. Va.
Estimate: $30,000–$50,000
Price fetched: $180,000
When Joseph B. Vandergrift went to build Vancroft, his hunting lodge-cum-manse on the banks of the Ohio River in 1901, it’s fair to say that the Standard Oil heir was living large. His 500-acre, million-dollar shangri-la included a bowling […]

Readers of the Forbes Collector newsletter may remember that E. Forbes Smiley made our 2005 list of top scandals that rocked the collecting world. Why? Back in June, the former rare map dealer, a resident of Chilmark, Mass. (seen in his booking photo, above), pleaded guilty to a federal charge of major artwork theft, after […]

Individual collectors looking for a piece of American civil rights history will have to look elsewhere. The Sotheby’s auction of Dr. Martin Luther King’s archives (see below), which had been set to take place tomorrow, has been called off. The remarkable collection has been purchased and given to King’s own alma mater, Morehouse College in […]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/09/america/web.0609king.php
An institution needs to step up.
On June 30th, Sotheby’s will auction the archives of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The trove contains more than 10,000 documents—7,000 of which are in King’s own hand. Some of the most noteworthy: a manuscript of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, an annotated copy of “Letter […]