David Redden was the longest serving auctioneer at the auction house Sotheby’s. (photo courtesy the Getty Research Institute)

The Getty Research Institute has received the donation of the papers of David Redden, the longest serv­ing auctioneer at the venerable auc­tion house Sotheby’s. The collec­tion documents Redden’s entire career in the auction world.

Working at Sotheby’s for 42 years, from 1974 until 2016, Redden is notable for the high-pro­file sales which he personally devel­oped. A passionate collector him­self, Redden created new auction categories out of popular collecting passions, including space artifacts, sports memorabilia, comic books, arcade machines and computer ani­mation art. A portrait of both Redden and his milieu at Sotheby’s, the collection comprises personal files, slides, photographs, complete sets of auction catalogs and related ephemera.

“This archive, shaped by Redden’s personal engagement, and documenting his first- hand knowl­edge and significant presence in the auction world, is a unique trove with a special personal perspec­tive,” Mary Miller, director of the Getty Research Institute, said.

It was Redden’s role to develop and organize most of Sotheby’s most important sales, and the archive contains entire notebooks and series of files that document negotiations, strategies and the organization of highly important and extremely original collections, including the series of sales for Walt Disney, the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, the collections of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, nine Faberge eggs owned by the Forbes family and the pre­served fossil remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue.

Redden also sold important art­works, rare books, and manuscripts, including three copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Rothschild Pentateuch, one of the most elaborate illuminated Hebrew Bibles to survive from the Middle Ages, which was purchased by the Getty Museum in 2018.

“It gives me great pleasure to know that my diary of well over one million words and the associated papers are going to be preserved by one of the greatest art archives in the world,” Redden said. “The GRI will now get an extremely detailed look at one side of Sotheby’s, which I hope will be of interest to future scholars.’