Free Republic

Her husband, Peter Max, a pop icon in the 1960s and 1970s, is now 81 and suffering from dementia. His bright, eye-popping colors made his paintings some most recognizable works of the psychedelic era. Despite his counterculture aesthetic, he became very wealthy doing commissioned works for the most mainstream of clients such as the NFL, FIFA, the Recording Academy and various media companies. Mary Max had in recent years been embroiled in family legal battles over the artist and his work, which were chronicled in a recent New York Times piece.

Peter Max was not a car guy. So when he purchased a collection of 36 Chevrolet Corvettes, one from every year of manufacture up until 1989, he had a very specific plan: He would use this slice of American history as a tool to self-promote his work as an artist, painting the machines in lurid colors while staging them in various oddball scenarios only the most expressive of minds could envision. Only that never happened. Instead, Max left his collection in a New York City storage lot, which is where they've lived for a quarter of a century, sat gathering...