Wisconsin Museum Showcases Lennon Drawings
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono and Lennon’s admirers are so protective of Lennon’s legacy they don’t want any of his original drawings photographed in full.
Some are fragile and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, and they don’t want them to hit the Internet, where they can be counterfeited.
So for the first time the public will get to see 27 pencil and pen drawings along with five lithographs and serigraphs — all authenticated — at the Waukesha County Historical Society Museum, outside Milwaukee.
“Coming Together Through The Art of John Lennon” runs Saturday through September 1.
A retired man in his 50s — who wants to remain anonymous — loaned the art and other memorabilia, such as the microphone Lennon used to record “Imagine,” to the museum.
Paul Jillson, who has represented Lennon’s artwork since 1988, said Lennon didn’t sell his works through galleries and didn’t catalog them, so for someone to have collected so many originals is a coup. Ms. Ono has 1,700 of Lennon’s original drawings, he said.
The museum’s executive director, Kirsten Villegas, said the collector’s stash is purported to be the third-largest public collection of original Lennon drawings, with Ms. Ono holding the largest collection.
