Seeger and Cone Library Auction
Stanley J. Seeger sold off his entire collection of 88 Picassos in a single 1993 sale, and the library he built afterward with his partner Christopher Cone is just as far ranging. Their joint estate is now headed to auction, split across centuries and tones: a complete autograph manuscript of Beethoven's "Allegretto for Piano Trio in B flat," billed as the most substantial Beethoven manuscript to reach auction in 20 years, sits in the same sale as a first edition of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and Virginia Woolf's personal copy of Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd." Further down the list: a suite of five Glen Baxter lithographs from 1984, signed and numbered 190 of 200. Medieval illuminated manuscripts and Book of Hours share space with absurdist prints from six decades later. Seeger was known for having no interest in market trends, and the spread on offer here reads like proof: a library built on instinct rather than category.

