A few months after her death in October at age 79, a curation of clothing, books, home furnishings, and movie memorabilia belonging to the great Diane Keaton is headed to auction, divided across four landmark sales at Bonhams this May and June.
“Diane Keaton was not simply a collector, but a consummate editor,” Anna Hicks, Bonhams’s US head of private and iconic collections, said in a release announcing Diane Keaton: The Architecture of an Icon on Monday morning. “Each piece—whether it be art, fashion, decor, or personal object—was chosen by her with remarkable precision and clarity, reflecting an innate instinct for composition, restraint, and meaning.”
Inside Keaton’s Sullivan Canyon home, a source of many of the sales’ major lots.
Photo: Ruvén Afanador, courtesy of Bonhams
To underscore the breadth and depth of the collection—which includes scripts and other production materials from Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), and The Godfather trilogy; clothing from Ralph Lauren, Thom Browne, Comme des Garçons, Bottega Veneta, Prada, Marni, and Gucci (not to mention some of Keaton’s famous hats); and artworks by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, and her Reds and Something’s Gotta Give costar Jack Nicholson—the sales will be preceded by exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles.
A collage in Keaton’s home.
Photo: Ruvén Afanador, courtesy of Bonhams
“Few individuals possess the rare ability to move between disciplines while maintaining a singular and unmistakable point of view. My sister, Diane, was one such person,” writes Dorrie Hall, one of Keaton’s three younger siblings, in a foreword to the collection’s accompanying catalogue. “Diane was always drawn to design and to fashion, but only through the lens of her unique perspective, her innate sense of unmistakable taste.”
That taste is evidenced not only in the furniture and fashion from Keaton’s precisely decorated home in Sullivan Canyon—from a pair of Monterey-style stained-wood settees to a suite of silk Ralph Lauren Purple Label neckties and an assortment of vintage cameos and costume jewelry—but also in selected photographs and mixed-media collages created by Keaton herself.
Hall goes on to describe Keaton in action, turning her unerring eye to Hall’s own space. “During visits to my home, she might gently suggest a shift—a chair repositioned or a painting rehung. These gestures were never impositions, but thoughtful offerings, grounded in a refined understanding of space and style. Inevitably, the result was transformative.”
For more information on both the exhibitions and the sales, visit Bonhams’s website here.
