Vidal in 2007

In this 2007 photo, noted American novelist Gore Vidal sits in the reading room of Houghton Library, to which he donated his papers in 2002. Vidal, who died in 2012, bequeathed his entire multimillion-dollar fortune to Harvard.

“Untitled (Night View of Trees and Streetlamp, Burgkühnauer Allee, Dessau)” was taken in 1928 by Lyonel Feininger, an artist better known for his Cubist and Expressionist paintings.