http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/arts/recalling-blind-tom-an-autistic-pianist-born-to-slavery.html 2015-01-01 23:06:11 Recalling Blind Tom, an Autistic Pianist Born to Slavery A collection featuring items from the pianist Blind Tom will be up for auction, as will a stock photo agency’s inventory. === The pianist Blind Tom began drawing crowds to his performances as a child in the 1850s. His black family and various white guardians fought for rights to earn money from his career until his death in 1908. Blind Tom himself, who was born into slavery and given a series of last names over the years, was autistic and unable to fathom the legal battles. Near Tom’s hometown, Columbus, Ga., a county judge named George R. Greene, who died last year, at 63, spent decades buying artifacts related to Blind Tom and researching the musician’s accomplishments and tragic life. In February, James D. Julia’s Mr. Greene found portraits of Blind Tom, concert ads, witness descriptions of his strange leaps and rambling speeches during shows, and sheet music for songs that he composed partly based on street sounds and hymns. At the Phenix City museum, Mr. Greene also filled cases with locally excavated prehistoric arrowheads, Civil War ammunition and ads for 1950s politicians. John Sexton, a consultant to the Julia auction house, said Mr. Greene’s museum “had everything Columbus you could think of, from the mundane to the important.” The Greene family has already sold a few pieces from the museum. In June, its silver flute made for Blind Tom sold for about $38,000 at On Jan. 24, A TROVE OF STOCK PHOTOS In a silent auction that ends on Jan. 14, bidders can make offers of at least $5 million for the inventory of Ray Collins, 62, a member of the family that inherited the agency from the Browns in the 1950s, recently gave a tour with The box spines have labels as specific as “Sailors & Soldiers at Coney Island,” “Pay as You Enter Cars” and “Old Clocks.” One spine is ominously marked “Keep These Negatives in This Box or Else.” Mr. Collins, Mr. Caren and the visitors pulled out images of presidential campaigns, athletes, unfinished Manhattan skyscrapers, North African markets, railroad stations and starlets. A box of Hindenburg photos revealed a Hitler portrait hanging in that zeppelin’s otherwise bland dining room, burned corpses at the site of its disastrous mooring in 1937 in New Jersey, and coffins draped in Nazi and American flags. Glass negatives are interleaved with prints in some of the boxes. During the 1972 move to Pennsylvania, Mr. Collins said, “Not one glass negative was broken.” He added, “I can only hope and pray it’s done as well this time.” Mr. Caren said he had been discussing the auction lot with institutions, photo agencies, dealers and collectors. During the tour, the dealer Seth Kaller was opening box after box, documenting the wide travels of the Brown Brothers staff to capture current events. “Some of these photos really take you to the moment,” he said. Mr. Collins said that when potential buyers first arrive, they often intend to examine each photo. Then they realize the scale of the holdings. “The aura sort of wears off,” he said. “They realize they have to speed it up a little.” He will miss owning the inventory and the excitement of seeing the company name in print, he said. “I grew up reading newspapers and magazines sideways,” scanning for the words Brown Brothers run vertically in photo credits, he said. Mr. Caren, in addition to marketing the Brown Brothers material, is also offering his own huge batch of inventory. He is asking $8 million, or best offer, for 200,000 graphics, photos and other paperwork reporting American news, starting with 17th-century descriptions of colonists arriving. Like the Brown Brothers boxfuls, his wares come with no searchable database. Only he knows where anything is. “It’s the most poorly organized collection that you’ll ever see, but it’s filled with wonderful things,” he said. Wherever it ends up, he added: “I will come with it. I will organize it. It’s a passion.” In April, Daile Kaplan, a photography specialist at Swann, said that news agency images like the Brown Brothers trove rarely come on the market in large numbers. In October, a bidder paid $8,750 at Swann for an