A celebrated auctioneer takes a break from the block to purvey his own art, while a famous performer takes her treasures to the salesroom

Simon de Pury
Day Job: Chairman and chief auctioneer, Phillips de Pury & Company
Current Ambition: To sell his own photographs; get people on the dance floor
When: October 21-December 31
Where: Haute-couture boutique the Corner, in Berlin
Hightlight: Who knew de Pury was an avid shutterbug in his spare time? For just £6,000 ($8,567) one of the 38 unique prints in his solo show "PurePuryGraphy" can be yours. This globe-trotting lensman likes to render recognizable objects abstract. Recalling the origins of the rather suggestive You Really Turn Me On, de Pury muses, "I believe that particular motif was a lamp." The opening party on October 21, dubbed PurePuryPop, will find de Pury playing DJ, spinning such tunes as "the Aerosmith and Run dmc version of ‘Walk this Way.’ " says de Pury. Wallflowers, beware — he is as determined on the turntables as he is on the podium: "As a DJ, my objective is to get as many people dancing as possible."

Barbra Streisand
Day Job: Recording artist, actor
Current Ambition: To sell artworks and memorabilia to benefit the Streisand Foundation
When: October 17-18
Where: Julien’s Auctions, the Beverly Hilton, in Beverly Hills, CA
Highlight: Having finally completed her Malibu three-house complex, Streisand, who has been collecting art and furniture for more than 30 years, is selling 526 items — including an Arts & Crafts lamp (est: $12-18,000) — that don’t fit her new decorating scheme, and putting all the proceeds toward her foundation. That’s good news for a number of humanitarian causes, as well as for anyone who wants to nab a costume from Funny Lady (est. $1,000-1,500) or a vintage dental cabinet (est. $1,000-1,500) that Streisand picked up at the tender age of 18, right around the time she scored her first singing gig on The Tonight Show. The sale’s priciest lot (est. $100-200,000) is a colorful painting of, appropriately enough, a singer basking in the spotlight, attributed to Kees van Dongen.

"In the Air: Star Ambitions" originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2009 Table of Contents.