God help us if we ever take the theater out of the auction business or anything else. It would be an awfully boring world.

A. Alfred Taubman (1924–2015) was an American billionaire real estate developer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He was best known for his ownership and development of the Taubman Centers, Inc., a real estate investment trust that owns and operates shopping centers in the United States. He was also the former owner of Sotheby's, an international auction house. Taubman was born in Pontiac, Michigan, and graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in architecture in 1945. He began his career as a builder and developer of shopping centers in the 1950s and 1960s, and in the 1970s he acquired the A&W Restaurants chain and the Taubman Company, a real estate development firm. In 1983, he acquired Sotheby's, which he sold in the early 2000s. He was also a noted philanthropist, donating millions of dollars to educational and medical institutions.