WHOPPER SALE-Paul Allen's Artifacts

Living Computers Museum has closed

Chesley Bonestell’s Saturn as Seen from Titan.

Paul Gardner Allen (1953 – 2018) co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975. Allen was ranked as the 44th-wealthiest person in the world by Forbes worth of $20.3 billion when he died.

Allen Founded the Living Computer Museum in 2009.

The Seattle Living Computer Museum was a collection of mainframes, minicomputers, microcomputers and peripherals. Exhibits in the museum showed how much computers and technology had changed over the last 50 years. In 2013, Seattle Weekly voted the museum the "Best Geeky Museum" because it highlighted "an essential part of Seattle binary history- the founding of Microsoft and its role in establishing Seattle as a tech-driven industry."

The museum closed during COVID and the contents will be sold at auction.

Christie’s in New York will auction over 150 objects of scientific and historical importance from the Collection.

THE THREE AUCTIONS INCLUDE:

• FIRSTS: THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING

• PUSHING BOUNDARIES: INGENUITY FROM THE PAUL G. ALLEN COLLECTION

• OVER THE HORIZON: ART OF THE FUTURE¹

150 objects of scientific and historical importance will be auctioned from Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection. Assembled by a founding father of modern technology, the collection chronicles the history of human ingenuity, from first-generation technologies to interstellar exploration.

INCLUDES

• 1939- letter Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warning of the possibility of Germany’s ‘construction of extremely powerful bombs’ through nuclear fission.

• DEC PDP-10 mainframe computer

• Project Gemini spacesuit cover-layer

• Chesley Bonestell’s Saturn as Seen from Titan.

Select objects on view in New York at the 8th Art+Tech Summit on July 12-19, 2024.

The Art+Tech Summit is a two-day conference bringing together artists, technologists, academics, regulators and industry leaders, continuing Christie’s commitment to lead the dialogue about the role and impact of technologies in the art world. (July 17-18, 2024).

Last year Allen’s Art Collection sold for 1.6 BILLION. ²

1. Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection will be on view at Christie’s Rockefeller Center 5–9 September. The live sale, Pushing Boundaries: Ingenuity from The Paul G. Allen Collection, takes place on 10 September. The two online sales, Firsts: The History of Computing from The Paul G. Allen Collection and Over the Horizon: Art of the Future from The Paul G. Allen Collection, will be open for bidding through 12 September.

2. Record-breaking sale of Microsoft co-founder’s art collection surpasses $1.6 billion | CNN