2026/07/08 by Lauren Alex O’Hagan · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · Computer Science · Arts and Humanities · #Copyright and Intellectual Property #Library Collection Development and Digital Resources #Art History and Market Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/19401159.2026.2700980
In 2024, the estate of the late Irish blues-rock musician Rory Gallagher announced that his personal instrument collection would be offered for sale at the London auction house Bonhams. As a site of highly charged fan engagement, auctions provide a unique lens through which to examine the intersection of music material objects with affective, ritualized, and ethical practices. Drawing on object-oriented interviews with auction participants and informed by frameworks from affect theory and material culture studies, this paper conceptualizes the auction as a collective rite of passage rather than a purely economic transaction. In doing so, it highlights how material artifacts function as morally weighted technologies of presence, sustaining Gallagher’s posthumous legacy, and how fans approach the instruments as stewards rather than collectors, participating in a fan-led moral economy of acquisition and preservation. The auction, thus, can be seen as a form of “heritage-as-praxis” in which the movement of objects generates new performances of community, ethical regimes of value, and collective responsibility.