The guitar-strumming philanthropist

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has one of theworld’s best art collections but is without a family to inherit it. Where will it go, asks Blake Gopnik

SIT with Paul Allen in his office in Seattle and you might take him for the head of a middling actuarial firm. He is 59 and pear-shaped, in black slacks, a white shirt, and blue tie, with his hair cut short above nondescript glasses. His aggressive banality comes as a shock, given his outsize résumé.

He’s the “Idea Man”, (self-styled, as per his autobiography), who helped Bill Gates found Microsoft and walked away with billions early on. He’s the man who had such a passion for Jimi Hendrix that he built a Frank Gehry museum to house his Hendrixiana.