The late Maurice Sendak ordered that his personal letters be destroyed
Nearly half a century ago, the Rosenbach Museum and Library began building a relationship with the young author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, who very quickly started using the townhouse museum on Delancey Place as a repository for his original drawings, manuscripts, proofs, and rare editions.
Through the years the numbers mounted, and today about 10,000 items of Sendakiana, from original artwork to finished editions, fill the Rosenbach - the museum's best calling card with generations that grew up with his books.
But now that card is being recalled. Sendak never gifted the original artwork for Where the Wild Things Are and thousands of other items to the Rosenbach, and the trustees managing his legacy - he died at 83 in 2012 - have asked that the Sendak Collection be returned to them, ending a bond between artist and institution that many assumed would continue in perpetuity.
According to his will, filed in Fairfield County, Conn., Sendak instead chose to leave the collection to his eponymous foundation, which is expected to establish a museum and study center in his home in Ridgefield, Conn....
The will directs that some of his properties, including a Fifth Avenue co-op, be sold. Other properties, plus $2 million, was willed to his friend and neighbor Lynn Caponera (one of three trustees of his estate), with the remaining assets - plus rights and royalties to his works - going to support the Sendak Foundation.
Other friends are provided for. His partner of more than 50 years, psychiatrist and art critic Eugene Glynn, died in 2007.
Whatever anyone is able to see and learn at a Sendak museum in Connecticut, certain insights into Sendak the man will not be among them. The first directive in his will after asking that his finances be settled was this: Noting that he had already shown his executors the location of "all of my personal letters, journals and diaries," he ordered them, upon his death, to be destroyed.