Buyers of Declaration Plan to Share It With Public

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence that was sold on the Internet Thursday by sothebys.com for a record $7.4 million--$8.1 million, with the auction house’s commission--is likely to go on the road in a nationwide exhibition and theatrical production.

Los Angeles television producer and political activist Norman Lear, who bought the rare document with Bay Area Internet entrepreneur David Hayden, said in a press conference on Friday that he and his partner are not collectors but citizens who want “to share this precious symbol of democracy with the American people.”

“I don’t want to see it sitting on a wall, I want to take it where Americans can see it,” Lear said later, in a telephone interview.

“I made a film in Greenfield, Iowa, and that’s a place I know well,” he said, referring to the site of his 1970 film, “Cold Turkey.” “If that living document came to Greenfield, people would come by the busloads.”

Lear and Hayden--who haven’t disclosed how much each paid for the document--intend to loan the declaration to People for the American Way Foundation, a 300,000-member civil rights and liberties organization that Lear founded 20 years ago. They hope to send the document on tour with the backing of corporations and foundations.

No firm plans have been made, but Lear said the theatrical performance he had in mind would have the declaration’s message as its centerpiece. It would be “intensely patriotic” and would stress that the best way to keep the values of the document alive is to participate as a citizen. He also suggested that the declaration might be displayed in schools chosen by lottery.

“At this moment in the political cycle, we are talking a lot about voter apathy and voter registration,” he said. “We hope that on a 12-month-a-year basis this will be a reminder that [politicians’] promises are made and promises are not kept, and that the way they will be kept is if Americans exercise their fundamental rights as citizens.”

At the press conference at Sotheby’s auction house on the upper East Side of Manhattan, Lear marveled over being part owner of the document. “I still every once in a while don’t believe it. We look at it. My God, it’s real.”

Hayden, who joined Lear at the press conference, co-founded the company that developed the Internet search engine Magellan and is chairman of Critical Path Inc., an Internet messaging service. He said he feels “a very heavy sense of responsibility” about owning the rare manuscript.

“We will give it a voice,” he continued. “We will give it to the American people. This is mostly American, but there is a message here for the rest of the world.”

The document is one of about 500 copies of the first printing of the declaration and one of only four in private hands. It was discovered in the backing of a $4 flea-market painting in 1989 and sold at auction two years later for $2.4 million. The buyer, New York-based Visual Equities, consigned it to the online auction.