Nearly a decade after Donna Summer’s death in 2012, her home in Nashville was a shrine to the disco queen’s decades-long musical career.
The beaded gown she wore on stage remained stashed in an upstairs closet, along with designer pumps.Temporary items such as annotated album cover designs “She works hard for money” It was stored downstairs. And in the basement, colorful paintings, awards and gold records accumulated.
Summer, who died of lung cancer at the age of 63, never liked to talk about death, but never gave instructions on what to do with her belongings, her husband, Bruce Sudano, said recently. It was only in the last few years that her family, Ms. Summer, was ready to comb through her belongings at her home in Nashville, many of which will go up for sale at Christie’s next month. The auction house announced on Friday that it would.
“When you enter a space like this, it’s like a time capsule of life,” said Brooklyn Sudano, one of Summer’s three daughters.
One of the items for sale is a silver goblet that Summer often carried with her on stage, filled with caffeine-free Pepsi. Brooklyn Sudano said one of her jobs was to stir soda in her goblet to remove foam when she and one of her sisters were on tour with her mother in the 1990s. I remembered. (“I can’t burp while singing,” she explained.)
A versatile singer-songwriter who spans funk, dance, rock and gospel, Summer rose to fame in 1975 with the erotic extended cut of “Love to Love You Baby” and later pioneering electro songs. . “Feel the love,” His pulsating club beat can be heard in Beyonce’s music. “Summer Renaissance”.
The announcement by Christie’s comes ahead of HBO’s release on Saturday of a new family-backed biographical documentary directed by Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano. It chronicles Summer’s rise from cast member in the German film “Hair” to international superstar. the filmEntitled “Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” the song is about her personal life as much as her career, battling depression, being physically abused by her boyfriend, and being a born-again Christian. It is told about her chapter in .
Auctions include glamorous items as well as more mundane items. Finally, the gorgeous blue and green dress Summer wore. Music video The song “Unconditional Love” from 1983, the rhinestone-encrusted dress and bolero jacket she wore to her 1995 concert, and the diva’s collection of sunglasses.
As for the mundane, perhaps intriguing to the most avid fan, the sale includes an unused pair of shoes and 12 unused Louis Vuitton towels.
“There are people in the world who love her,” said Bruce Sudano, the managing director of her estate. “She felt that they could not hoard all this on their own.”
The online sale, which Christie’s expects to raise about $200,000 to $300,000, will begin June 15. A portion of the proceeds will go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Save the Music Foundation and Elton John AIDS Foundation. House said.
A poster for a 1998 concert in support of the nonprofit Gay Men’s Health Crisis illustrates the sometimes strained history of Summer’s relationship with LGBTQ fans. Many LGBTQ fans boycotted her music after it fueled a boom in the 80s.
The documentary briefly touches on that history, with Summer’s husband making an impromptu comment onstage: “God didn’t make Adam and Steve, God made Adam and Eve.” She recalls that her words deeply hurt many gay fans.summer worked on the repair Her relationship with her fanbase, especially after New York magazine described the AIDS crisis as “God’s judgment” on homosexuals, was a report she vehemently denied, and eventually filed a lawsuit.
The sale includes about 15 paintings and manuscripts with scribbled lyrics, including the 1977 song “Now I Need You,” written on stationery from a hotel in Munich, as well as copies of the hit song “On the Radio.” ‘ also includes a pencil-edited version of the lyrics. ”
Brooklyn Sudano scrutinized such documents when putting together the HBO film and found that her mother was not a pop star engineered by outside forces, but rather the production of the hit songs that made her famous. She said it strengthened her belief in being an artist involved.
“People just saw her as that kind of person,” she said. “I don’t think they really understood that she was an artist and played an active part in creating the Donna Summer that people knew.”
