In case the walls of your study need a little additional intellectual pedigree, consider the autograph auction October 11 at Swann Auction Galleries. You can score signed letters from the leading men of American history: George Washington, Ulysses Grant, and Ethan Allen.   

For people who didn't necessarily write with a quill pen, you can get a signed photograph of Hemingway, or a great shot of Marlon Brando in what looks like a pair of pajamas (above).  And if you're in the mood to feel like a rock god, you can bid on a panoramic shot of a crowd at a Tampa Bay concert signed by the members of Led Zeppelin (below).

--David Coggins

Four photographs of Kate Moss sold for more than $360,000 at Christie's London in May, the latest demonstration that she has become an art world darling. "Sphinx," an exhibition of Moss in a series of remarkably vacant contortions (left) by Marc Quinn is currently on view at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York (through June 30). Moss was the official poster-girl for "Face of Fashion," an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Two years ago a painting of a pregnant Moss by Lucian Freud sold for more than $7 million.

Among the photos sold in May was Chuck Close's rendering of Moss sans makeup and clothes for the September 2003 issue of W magazine -- a complete set of six prints that fetched nearly $166,000, more than five times the estimate. A larger-than-life nude of Kate in Marrakech (right) taken by Albert Watson in January 1993 and published in German Vogue, fetched an artist's-record $106,542. Irving Penn's platinum print Kate Moss (Hand on Neck) from 1996 sold for $75,763, and Corinne Day's notorious 1993 depiction of a scantily-clad waifish Kate framed by candy-colored lights, first published in British Vogue, sold for more than $13,021.

Recently named one of Time's 100 most influential people and with a clothing line now in Topshop and Barneys, Moss has become an even more ubiquitous icon since the Daily Mirror caught her on camera in 2005 partaking in what appeared to be a pile of coke. Last year, two pranksters snuck a Kate Moss Floor Mat, appropriating the infamous Daily Mirror cover shot, into the Whitney Biennial. As Quinn sees it, "In a world without gods and goddesses, celebrity has replaced divinity. What is interesting to me about Kate Moss is that she is someone whose image has completely separated from her real self and this image has a life of its own."

A life that elicits a lot of cold hard cash.

-- Kelly Devine Thomas

Irving Penn, Kate Moss (Hand on Neck), 1996.

Compared to most other art forms, photography's history is a mere blink of the eye -- the British "father of modern photography," William Henry Fox Talbot, created the first modern negative, using paper soaked in silver chloride, around 180 years ago.

A relatively young art, then, but almost unfathomably vast, and the catalogue for the sale at Christie's on February 15 practically constitutes a comprehensive text. From the iconic expanse of the simultaneously ancient and new Western frontier captured by Edward S. Curtis, to the impeccably styled, shimmering scenarios created by David LaChapelle, to the sharp, unfussy portraits by Martin Schoeller (Angelina Jolie, above) every lot is a history lesson captured frame by frame.

Below are a few highlights:

CECIL BEATON (1904-1980), Mick Jagger, c. 1969

EDWARD S. CURTIS (1868-1952) , Selected images from North American Indian, 1905-06

JOHN SWANNELL (b. 1946), Fine Lines, 1997