A Chance to See Barbra’s Other Hits : Auction: A free exhibition of some of her Art Nouveau and Art Deco collection, set for a March 3-4 sale at Christie’s New York, opens today at the St. James Club in Hollywood.

Barbra Streisand’s fame is such that everything she touches seems desirable. Had she become a collector of corset stays or toothpick holders, she probably would have started a market trend. The fact that she developed a passion for decorative and fine arts in Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles--for which prices already run to six and seven figures--ensures that an upcoming New York auction of her collection and a Los Angeles preview of the sale will be hot events.

The two-day auction of more than 400 objects--valued at a total of about $4 million--will be held on March 3-4 at Christie’s New York. The best of Streisand’s 20th-Century decorative and fine arts will be offered on March 3 at the auction house’s Park Avenue establish ment. Lower-priced decorative arts and memorabilia will go on the block the next day at Christie’s East, an Upper East Side outpost where collectibles are sold.

Southern Californians can sample the auction’s highlights in a free exhibition of 40 prime objects today through Friday at the St. James Club in Hollywood. Streisand will host a $250-per-ticket benefit reception for the UCLA Breast Center tonight at the club.

The multifaceted star is known as an obsessive collector who has designed entire rooms around single objects and decorated her homes in Beverly Hills and Malibu with the same attention to detail as she devotes to film productions.

Streisand was unavailable for interviews on the upcoming auction, but a Christie’s newsletter quotes her as saying she wants to simplify her life and notes that she has donated her $15-million Malibu estate (which was furnished in Art Deco style) to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

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“I don’t want to spend so much time being preoccupied with objects, and I don’t want so many anymore,” Streisand says in the publication. “That’s all. I just want less.” I don’t want to have things in storage anymore. I don’t want to have them in boxes in the basement. I want other people to enjoy them if I don’t have room for them anymore. It’s a good feeling to use these things for a while and pass them on during your lifetime.”

Among the priciest attractions in the preview of furniture, decorative objects, paintings and sculptures are two Art Nouveau lamps by Louis Comfort Tiffany. A leaded glass “Cobweb” lamp with a mosaic base of white cobwebs and cherry blossoms is expected to bring the auction’s highest price, $800,000 to $1 million. Streisand purchased the lamp in 1979 for $55,000, but a less elaborate version set an auction record for a Tiffany lamp in 1992, when it was sold for $770,000.

A red Tiffany “Peony” lamp ($250,000 to $350,000), which has been the centerpiece of an Art Nouveau-style living room in Streisand’s Beverly Hills home, also will be exhibited, along with an elephant-motif vase ($80,000 to $100,000) and a “Dragon Fly” table ($25,000 to $35,000), both designed by Emile Galle.

Examples of Streisand’s taste for Art Deco will include “Adam and Eve,” Tamara de Lempicka’s 1932 stylized painting of a nude couple ($600,000 to $800,000), Jacques Lipchitz’s “Woman and Gazelles” sculpture ($150,000 to $200,000), a Cartier clock in the form of a Shinto temple gate ($100,000 to $150,000) and Lalique glass works.

Two of Streisand’s classic cars--a 1926 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Springfield ($50,000 to $60,000) and a 1933 customized Dodge Roadster ($15,000 to $20,000)--also are for sale, but they will be represented by large photographs at the preview.