Two months before the first public exhibition of Paul Allen’s art collection, the curator found himself inside the billionaire’s box at the Super Bowl XL in 2006, rooting for his team.
While the Seattle Seahawks lost, the after-party was a riot, with Allen jamming on guitar and actor Dan Aykroyd accompanying him on harmonica.
“We rocked till 2 or 3 in the morning,” the curator, Paul Tucker, said Tuesday, a day after Allen’s death at age 65. “It was my gift before the show opened.”
Tucker, an art scholar who played football in college, said he doesn’t know what will become of the collection, a vast trove that spans centuries from antiquities to contemporary art and that may be worth more than $1 billion, according to people who are familiar with it.
Allen, who co-founded Microsoft Corp. with Bill Gates and was the world’s 27th-richest person at the time of his death, was driven by passion and curiosity. Read more