Billionaire financier and art collector Ken Griffin has lent his second privately held first printing of the U.S. Constitution to the South Street Seaport Museum in New York for the exhibition "The Promise of Liberty: Words That Shaped a Nation," marking the country's 250th anniversary. The document, known as the Adrian Van Sinderen copy, was pulled from a Sotheby's auction in 2022 after institutional interest emerged; Griffin acquired it for an undisclosed sum. The exhibition also includes a local copy of the Declaration of Independence, an early printing of the Bill of Rights, and other historic documents tracing America's pursuit of liberty.
This matters because Griffin's acquisition and loan of the rare Constitution copy—one of only 14 surviving first printings—highlights the intersection of private wealth and public access to foundational American artifacts. Griffin, already a major art collector, has spent over $61 million on historic documents in recent years, including a record $43.2 million for another Constitution copy in 2021. The exhibition underscores ongoing debates about the role of billionaires in preserving and sharing cultural heritage, especially as Griffin outbid a crypto collective (ConstitutionDAO) that sought to keep the document in public hands.