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It is perhaps the ultimate “only in America” story: the rise of a boy from simple beginnings in Pontiac, Michigan, to the highest echelons of the business elite. Add to it one of the greatest collections of art in private hands — along with a brief stint in a Minnesota prison — and you have the story of A. Alfred Taubman, the self-made man with the steely might.

The billionaire philanthropist died last April at the age of 91, having left his mark on everything from retail to root beer. Taubman changed the way Americans shop, establishing some of the most upscale retail centers in the country. He owned real estate and department stores and even purchased the A&W Root Beer chain.

But it was his association with the venerable Sotheby’s auction house that thrust him into the public sphere. To fend off a hostile takeover, Taubman assembled a group of investors to purchase the centuries-old institution in 1983. As chairman, he used his retail know-how to make the business of buying art more accessible. He introduced celebrity-driven sales, such as the auctioning of the jewels of the Duchess of Windsor in 1987 and the treasures of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1996.

In 2001, he was convicted in a price-fixing scandal involving rival auction house Christie’s. He maintained his innocence to the end but served a 10-month sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester.

His life story recently came full circle, when the very auction house he once ran started selling off his world-class art collection in an unprecedented series of dedicated sales with some 500 works on offer. Taubman loved art as much as he loved business and owned everything from Raphael to Degas, Rothko to Picasso. The spectacular collection is valued at more than $500 million and spans from antiquity to contemporary art.

Taubman described the art he owned as his “very close friends.” And despite his public life, little was known about the masterpieces hanging in his homes.

“He kept his collection quiet,” says Sotheby’s executive C. Hugh Hildesley. “It wasn’t for show.” It is at long last on show for all the auction world to see — a final artistic chapter in a most colorful life.

Read this article as it appears in the magazine.

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