Bits and Pieces Summer 2020

1. NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- After 10 years, a chase for hidden treasure in the Rocky Mountains has come to an end.Forrest Fenn, a New Mexico art collector who created the treasure hunt, announced over the weekend that someone had found the bronze chest that he had buried in the mountains, filled with gold nuggets, coins, sapphires, diamonds, pre-Columbian artifacts and other items. He has estimated the hoard is worth $2 million.“It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago,” Fenn, 89, said on his website. He did not elaborate on the exact location.“I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot,” said Fenn, who lives in Santa Fe.A man who did not want to be named found the chest a few days ago, Fenn told a local newspaper, The Santa Fe New Mexican. Fenn said that the chest’s discovery was confirmed through a photograph the man had sent him. He had previously told the newspaper that the bronze chest alone weighed 20 pounds, and its contents another 22.Fenn, a former Air Force fighter pilot who runs a gallery in Santa Fe, hatched the idea for the hunt decades ago, after he learned he had kidney cancer. He had planned to have his remains interred with the riches, but when he recovered from the disease, he buried the box to give families a reason to “get off their couches,” he said in 2016.He announced the quest to the world in a self-published 2010 memoir, “The Thrill of the Chase,” and provided clues to the location in 24 cryptic verses of a poem. He has said that the treasure was hidden in the Rockies at 5,000 feet above sea level, hints that have sometimes led hunters into dangerous and remote stretches of wilderness. “Begin it where warm waters halt,” one clue reads, “and take it in the canyon down.”Tens of thousands of people have searched for the chest, according to Fenn. Seekers scrambled across high-elevation trails in Colorado, into the scrublands of New Mexico and toward landscapes carved by glaciers in Montana. Fenn eventually specified that the valuables were not in an area that an octogenarian would find hard to reach.But at least two people have died trying to follow his clues, and some have accused Fenn of endangering people’s lives by offering up a quixotic adventure or even a hoax. In 2017, Chief Pete Kassetas of New Mexico State Police urged Fenn to stop the hunt, saying that people were putting their lives on the line.“People are coming from other states and other parts of the world to find this elusive treasure that may or may not exist, with very few clues,” Kassetas said at the time. “They’re underestimating New Mexico.”Fenn declined to retrieve the chest, however. “If someone drowns in the swimming pool we shouldn’t drain the pool,” Fenn told The New York Times that year. “We should teach people to swim.”And there have been accounts of close calls and rescues. In 2013, a Texas woman looking for the chest in New Mexico got lost near Bandelier National Monument, an expanse of 33,000 acres filled with canyons, steep trails and rugged woods. After spending a frigid night between two boulders, she was rescued the next day.Jenny Kile, who has tracked the hunt for years on her website, Mysterious Writings, said Monday that the hunt had enticed thousands because “it was believed that no matter who you were, it could be done.”“This belief did have some go against caution, either financially, physically or emotionally,” she added. “But for the vast majority, the opportunity was an adventure of a lifetime. Who doesn’t want to look for treasure?”On his website this weekend, Fenn commended all of the thrill seekers who had tried to find the chest over the years.“I congratulate the thousands of people who participated in the search and hope they will continue to be drawn by the promise of other discoveries,” he said.Though the person who found the chest might remain anonymous, even to Fenn, the discovery might still come with some strings attached. Anyone who finds and keeps property that has been lost or abandoned, such as a treasure trove, will also find it “taxable to you at its fair market value in the first year it’s your undisputed possession,” according to the IRS.https://artdaily.cc/news/124383/Someone-found-the-treasure-that-an-art-dealer-buried-in-the-Rocky-Mountains#.X2Zu12hKhsA© 2020 The New York Times Company2. LONDON.- Open for bidding from today until 16 July, Eureka! is a journey through the scientific and technological breakthroughs that have formed the modern world, and the brilliant minds that lay behind them. From Thomas Edison’s pioneering design for the lightbulb to Crick and Watson’s celebrated discovery of the structure of DNA, from a Second World War Enigma Machine to the invention of in vitro fertilisation, from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking, this online auction provides collectors with an opportunity to acquire a slice of history that has shaped the world we live in.Among the highlight lots offered is the Nobel Prize Medal awarded to British Scientist Sir Robert Edwards in 2010, for the development of human in vitro fertilisation (IVF) therapy (estimate: £500,000-800,000). Edwards’ pioneering research, alongside his two collaborators Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy, eventually led to the birth of Louise Brown on 25 July 1978, marking the first conception and birth by IVF. In the years that followed, procedures were undertaken in Australia and the USA, then across the world.Following Christie’s successful sale of personal items from the estate of Professor Stephen Hawking in 2018’s inaugural online auction On the Shoulders of Giants which were 100% sold, bidders will also have the opportunity to purchase a number of unique items directly offered from the late physicist’s estate. Highlights include a rare Hawking portrait by Anton Corbijn, the creative director best known for the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2 (estimate: £1,000-1,500), and a Simpsons figurine of him made by Playmates Toys (estimate: £500-800). These rare items provide a remarkable insight into the cultural interests, personality and sense of fun of this extraordinary man.Continuing the theme of pioneers and life-changing discoveries, the sale also offers seven autographed and annotated design drawings by American inventor Thomas Edison for his lightbulb and related innovations (estimate: £60,000-90,000). Each sketch testifies to Edison’s continued work on the electric lamp throughout the 1880s, as well as offering an example of the related inventions that filled his design notebooks. The online sale also features an extraordinary collection of 50 patents from famous inventor Nikola Tesla’s most fruitful period, comprising almost half of all the patents granted to him. The collection includes Tesla’s patent for the invention of the radio, one of the key technological discoveries of the last century; for the ‘Tesla coil’, which was the basis of his method of wireless power transmission; for remote controlled devices, which anticipated robotics; and those for his systems of power transmission, AC motors, generators, incandescent arc-lighting, transformers, etc. (estimate: £120,000-160,000). These patents are the originals issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).Eureka! will also feature one of the rarest and hardest to decrypt Enigma Machines, a four-rotor (“M4”) used by the German Navy's U-boat fleet to send encrypted messages during WWII, which Allied efforts tried to break under the leadership of Alan Turning at Bletchey Park and of Joe Desch in Dayton, Ohio. It is thought that fewer than 100 M4 Enigmas survived the war as they were produced in much smaller quantities than the 3-rotor machines (estimate: £200,000-300,000).Sophie Hopkins, Christie’s Specialist in Manuscripts and Archives, London, comments, “The Christie’s Books & Manuscripts department has hit upon a winning formula with our online science sales, which routinely attract hundreds of buyers and bidders from across the globe – many of them new to the auction world and to book collecting – all drawn by a carefully curated selection of autograph material, printed books, photographs and association objects from the most brilliant scientific minds of the modern age. For this sixth iteration in our hugely successful series, we are delighted to offer rare items from revolutionary thinkers of the 20th century – from Albert Einstein to Richard Feynman and another engaging tranche of material from the personal collection of Professor Stephen Hawking, this sale is a rare opportunity to acquire a range of unique items chronicling brilliant minds’ lives and their visionary work.”