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NPR’s All Things Considered tours the Norton Simon Museum on the occasion of Sara Campbell’s new book. She gave them some insight into Simon’s habits as a buyer:

Simon kept careful track of all the numbers. “He remembered every price he ever paid,” Campbell says, down to the currency and its conversion rate. […]

Simon appreciated the art that he collected, but kept an emotional distance from it — especially when it came to buying and selling.

“There are times when he has been quoted saying, ‘I have to maintain some distance from this or it will consume me,'” says Campbell.

Simon needed to be able to decide when to sell a piece and when to walk away from a difficult dealer.

Norton Simon: The Best Museum You Haven’t Visited (NPR)

Suzanne Muchnic’s review of a history of Norton Simon’s art collection contains this narrative of Simon’s activities as an art buyer. This should remind some who decry the auction guarantees and active art trading that the practices are hardly unusual or new:

In the convoluted case of Edouard Manet’s “Still Life With Fish and Shrimp,” Simon bought the Impressionist painting in 1960 for $110,000 and consigned it to Sotheby’s in 1973 — with a guarantee that the auction house would buy the picture for $1.5 million if bidding didn’t go that high. When no buyer emerged, the firm kept its promise and tried to sell the artwork privately, but had no luck until five years later when Simon returned. He offered to buy it back for $400,000 if he was the winning bidder or even the under-bidder on the “Branchini Madonna,” a 15th-century Italian altarpiece scheduled to go on the block.Continue Reading