Newspaper headlines don’t always do their subjects justice and the Miami Herald was in this predicament recently when it celebrated the continuing generosity of Jay Kislak as he continues to place his extraordinary collection of irreplaceable books and artifacts at institutions. The recent headline was “This college donation is truly historic. And it’s not just the artifacts involved.”
Yes, it’s historic but that hardly covers it. Jay Kislak has been, for most of his ninety plus years, a serious collector and determined auction bidder who fought off the entreaties and challenges of dealers, institutions and collectors who fought with him for the exceptional material that Mr. Kislak collected. Few beat him and the outcome, some sixty years in the making, is the ying to Mr. Kislak’s early yang. Yes, he was a ferocious competitor who, in his sunset years, has become a man of exceptional generosity. Recently, in giving rare books, maps, manuscripts and artifacts to the University of Miami and Miami Dade College he continues to gift significant portions of his collections to institutions so that they will be available for examination and study deep into the future. In his continuing acts of generosity he sets the standard for collectors. In fact it’s appropriate to say he’s rarer than a Gutenberg.
Twelve years ago he donated four thousand rare books, maps, documents, paintings, prints and artifacts to the Library of Congress to form “The Cultures and History of the Americas: The Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress." Since then he has continued to make gifts.
Here is a brief list of high points of the 2,300 book, maps, manuscripts he is gifting.
Ptolemy’s Cosmographia, 1486
Peter Martyr, 1521
The Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1589
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 26th March 2026
Forum, Mar. 26: Book of Hours.- Heures a lusaige de Romme, printed on vellum, with 14 full-page illuminated miniatures, Paris, N. Higman for J. de Brie, [c.1521]. £20,000-30,000
Forum, Mar. 26: France.- Book of Hours, perhaps Use of the Abbey of Saint-Gildas de Rhuys, with thirteen miniatures surviving from an original cycle of at least twenty, [c. 1430]. £15,000-20,000
Forum, Mar. 26: Milton (John). Paradise lost. A Poem in Ten Books, first edition, Pforzheimer's sixth state, S. Simmons, 1669. £8,000-12,000
Forum, Mar. 26: Blake (William). Illustrations of the Book of Job, one of 215 first issue "Proof" copies, this one of 65 copies on "French" paper, Published by the Author, March 8, 1825 [but March, 1826]. £15,000-20,000
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 26th March 2026
Forum, Mar. 26: Christie (Agatha). The ABC Murders, first edition, The Crime Club, 1936. £15,000-20,000
Forum, Mar. 26: Halley (Edmund). Astronomiae Cometicae Synopsis, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, no. 297, pp.1882-99, March 1705. £10,000-15,000
Forum, Mar. 26: Haytham (Ibn al) [known as Alhazen]. Opticae Thesaurus...Item Vitellonis Thuringopoloni libri X..., first edition, Basel, August, 1572. £20,000-30,000
Forum, Mar. 26: Kepler (Johannes). Dioptrice seu demonstratio eorum quae visui & visibilibus propter conspicilla non ita pridem inventa accidunt, first edition, Augsburg, David Frank, 1611. £12,000-18,000
