A Year After Feinstein’s Death, Her Life’s Belongings Are for Sale

In 1990, Dianne Feinstein retreated to a beach house on the coast of Northern California after she lost a grueling race to become the state's governor. She was 57, and her political career appeared to have peaked at "mayor of San Francisco." She told friends that she was thinking about leaving public life for good.

On the day after the election, former President Jimmy Carter sent her a handwritten note. "I've won some & lost some, so I can share some of your feelings," wrote Mr. Carter, who had lost his bid for a second term in the White House 10 years earlier. That defeat at the time had seemed "a tragedy." But since then, he went on, his life had been more full and productive than he could have ever imagined.

Two years later, Ms. Feinstein won a seat in the Senate, where she remained until she died at the age of 90 last year.

As for the rest of Ms. Feinstein's legacy? Much of that is also for sale now.

On Tuesday in Los Angeles, at a starting bid of $800 to $1,200, Mr. Carter's note of encouragement will go up for auction at Bonhams. The event will include not only scores of the senator's memorabilia, but hundreds more pieces of art that she owned, her home decorations, her books and even her jewelry.

The trove is an archive of a life that was rich in many senses — wealth, accomplishment, adventure. But the auction also has rekindled memories in California political circles of the bitter final stretch of the senator's tenure.

A lifelong guardian of the dignity of her office, Ms. Feinstein struggled to function in her last term . And toward the end of her life, a legal and financial dispute erupted among the trustees overseeing the fortune amassed by her and her husband, the financier Richard C. Blum, who died about a year and a half before her.

To many who knew Ms. Feinstein, the public display of her personal artifacts seems far from the epilogue she might have wanted: With her pearls and scarves and formal manners, the senator, who grew up in affluence and died with significant wealth, was an icon of professional restraint.

"I think Dianne would have found it unusual to have her items auctioned off to strangers," said Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco and a friend since her first campaign for local office. "I hope that when I pass on, my family won't do that to me."

Much of the case, which had Mr. Blum's trustees on one side and Ms. Feinstein's daughter on the other, representing her mother, appeared to be rendered moot after the senator died on Sept. 29, 2023.

In an interview, the senator's daughter, Katherine Feinstein, a retired superior court judge in San Francisco, said that she had made peace with the winding down of the estate, and that her mother had already supplied her and her daughter, the senator's only grandchild, with a wealth of memories.

"It has been a year," she said. "My fondest wish now is for my mother's cherished things to end up in the hands of people who care about them."

Victoria R. Gray, deputy chairwoman for Bonhams North America, said last year's disagreements did not affect the auction, which is titled " Legacy of a Stateswoman: The Personal Collection of Senator Dianne Feinstein ."

"As with many blended families, there was some friction, but none of this has been a problem," Ms. Gray said.

Friends of the family said the sale made more sense than it might seem to outsiders who had not amassed the personal effects of more than a half-century in public office or the contents of multiple mansions. The senator's main residence, a 9,500-square-foot home on Lyons Street in San Francisco, is being readied for sale, and Bonhams selected many of the auction items from those rooms and from her 7,185-square-foot home in Washington.

In addition, they said, there are still many mundane household items, including furniture and flatware, to dispose of. And not to mention the senator's clothes, which are likely to be donated to charities.

Highlights have been on display for several weeks in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where Bonhams has been whetting appetites for the live auction on Tuesday with cocktail receptions and tours for media and potential V.I.P. buyers. There are the chunky gold necklaces and fine pearls that were the senator's hallmarks. There are brooches from Tiffany & Co., earrings from Bulgari, bangles from the Italian jeweler Buccellati and a watch from Cartier.

There are Chinese figurines and blown-glass sculptures by the artist Dale Chihuly. There is an 1863 painting of Vernal Falls by the American artist Enoch Wood Perry Jr. that is believed to be the first formal depiction of the 317-foot landmark in Yosemite before it was a national park. There is a still life by the senator herself — one among scores that she handed out as gifts over the decades.

"I already had two," said Jerry Roberts, the author of a biography of Ms. Feinstein, laughing. "And after she died, her Senate office sent me two more in the mail."

There is a wooden desk plaque from her time as mayor and a framed Senate roll call from when she unsuccessfully sought to censure President Bill Clinton in 1999 for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. There is an autographed copy of the book " Know Your Power " by her fellow San Franciscan and friend, the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"To Dianne, a woman who knows her own power," Ms. Pelosi's inscription says.

Interest has been strong, Ms. Gray said, in line with a string of recent celebrity estate auctions that have captured the imaginations of collectors as the art market has struggled to rebound. (For instance, a Bonhams auction in 2022 of the personal library of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg of the Supreme Court sold out, with final bids that totaled more than $2.3 million, well over estimates.) More than 1,200 bidders have already registered for the event.