Music, Film, and Sports Treasures Shine in Christie’s Spotlight

On Tuesday afternoon, I visited Christie’s headquarters at Rockefeller Center for a temporary display of the Jim Irsay Collection, just before it goes on auction.

This “chorus of cultural touchstones,” as Christie’s heralds it, represents the life-long passion of the late, Indiana-based billionaire, philanthropist, and owner of the Indianapolis Colts. Irsay supported a spectrum of causes, from medical research to oceanography. He also invested much of his fortune in exceptional memorabilia.

Here are several of Irsay’s most amazing artifacts.

• Guitar Magazine called Irsay’s “the greatest guitar collection on Earth.” If not hundreds, then certainly scores of them line Christie’s walls and fill its presentation spaces. These include beauties owned and played by Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Prince, and many other rock, folk, and soul greats.

“Tiger,” Grateful Dead co-founder Jerry Garcia’s famous Doug Irwin-bespoke guitar, is a special treat. The solos that Garcia coaxed out of that instrument routinely launched into orbit millions of Deadheads, including your humble correspondent.

Other guitars, particularly a brushed-aluminum National or two, are appealing for their looks alone — regardless of who strummed them.

• Sir Elton John’s touring Steinway concert-grand pianois still standing, after all this time. The rock & roll god played the black-lacquered model at countless shows, from 1973 through 1988. The Rocketman autographed the internal cast-iron plate: “Enjoy this as much as I have/Elton John.”
• Centered perfectly at the base of Christie’s double staircase, one finds Ringo Starr’s drum kit from The Beatles’ seismic breakthrough on CBS-TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Christie’s photographed those sacred objects beside John Lennon’s Gretsch guitar, among other stringed instruments and an upright piano that once belonged to the Fab Four.
• A weathered Fleetwood Mac touring-guitar case is here, quite weary for the wear.

• Dazzling in bright red, with white interior, Hunter S. Thompson’s 1973 Chevrolet Caprice convertible, AKA “The Shark,” co-starred in the film of his landmark book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The auction lot includes cassette tapes of Jimmy Buffett and Allman Brothers Band recordings. Thompson surely played these as he cruised around in this lovely example of Detroit’s pre-Energy Crisis automotive design.
• Cinematic items include Austin Powers’ thick-rimmed eyeglasses, shooting scripts of The Godfatherand Scarface, and a red spiral notebook in which Sylvester Stallone jotted his thoughts while directing Rocky.

• Behold a baseball that Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig jointly signed, sometime between 1927 and 1931.
• Boxing mementos from Muhammad Ali include a program for his September 10, 1966, faceoff against Karl Mildenberger in Frankfurt, West Germany. This keepsakerecalls what locals called the Weltmeisterschaft im Schwergewicht. (Germans say this without chipping their teeth!) Americans knew this as the World Heavyweight Championship. (Spoiler: Ali defeated Mildenberger in a 12th-round TKO.)
• Irsay also gathered KGB intelligence tools, not least a purse with a hidden camera, shoes with clandestine compartments, and a belt for concealing secrets.

• Most eerily, Irsay acquired a poster for the February 3, 1959, Winter Dance Party in Moorhead, Minnesota. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson (AKA the Big Bopper), and pilot Roger Peterson all died in a plane crash en route to that engagement. Don McLean immortalized The Day the Music Died in his elegiac masterpiece, “American Pie.”

Those in a hurry can swing through this free exhibit in about 35-40 minutes. At leisure, an hour to 90 minutes should allow abundant time to appreciate the Jim Irsay Collection, in its totality and for its individual gems.

After this event concludes, these articles — and lots more — will be auctioned off to the highest bidders.

Don’t miss it.

Viewing

Christie’s New York
20 Rockefeller Plaza

(Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues)
New York, NY 10020
Through 4:30 p.m. ET today

Auction

Live: From 5:00 p.m. today through Saturday, March 14.

Online: Through Tuesday, March 17.

Contact
212-636-2000
info@christies.com

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.

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