Marilyn Monroe Memorabilia Sold to Fund Lincoln Presidential Library

Would Honest Abe approve? At Julien's Auctions in Las Vegas on June 23, a selection of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia was sold to benefit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, which has been in a tight spot since its 2007 purchase of the Barry and Louise Taper Collection of presidential relics. According to Smithsonian, to avoid selling the Lincoln artifacts, the foundation that runs the library approved the sale of some Monroe prints and objects also acquired in that 2007 purchase, including a terra cotta bust of poet Carl Sandburg once owned by Monroe (estimated at $20,000-30,000, but didn't sell) and one of her little black dresses (estimated at $40,000-60,000, and sold for $50,000). 

During the same sale, Julien's offered three Monroe-owned books, including E.M. Halliday's The Ignorant Armies (1960) and A View of the Nation, An Anthology, 1955-1959 (1960), each of which realized $576. But a third book, Monroe's prayer book for Jewish worship (pictured above), with the cover stamped "Marilyn Monroe Miller," made $16,000.  

That last lot reminded me of a book offered at Doyle in 2017: her "somewhat worn" personal copy of The Form of Daily Prayers, According to the custom of the German and Polish Jews (1922). That one, however, estimated at $4,000-6,000, failed to sell.