(Auction Catalogue) Sotheby's, May 23, 2008. AMERICAN INDIAN ART.
New York. 155 pages, 192 lots auctioned, all lots illustrated. Total sales: $3,635,000. Fine condtion. Price list included. Item #15960
Included in the sale are some objects from the Ralph and Patricia Altman Collection. Ralph was a legendary prmitive art dealer in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, 1950s, and up to the early 1960s, when he was tapped to become the director of the new Museum of Cultural History at UCLA (which later metamorphasized into the Welcome Collection and thence the Fowler Museum). Tragically, Ralph died early into his new career, but his skill in directing the new museum and his well-earned reputation for possesing an unerring eye persist even today. Patricia Altman remained at the museum for many years in a curatorial position that served to only further enhance the family's reputation. After her death in 2007, a treasure trove of wonderful objects they had collected a half century or more earlier was uncovered.
Price: $65.00