– –
–
The billionaire was close to Donald Trump, which put him at odds with the firm founded by his mother. He is otherwise a true art lover.
–
–
An armor made for a Duke Friedrich Ullrich von Braunschweig-Lüneburg at the end of the 16th century.
Credits: DR.
It was the Christmas present. On December 9, Ronald Lauder announced his donation to the Metropolitan Museum in New York (Met) of 91 full or partial armor. This is essentially one of its collections, started in 1976. The New York institution had not been at such a party in this area since 1942. It suddenly decided (but is- this quite spontaneous?) to rename the department in question “Ronald S. Lauder Galleries of Arms and Armors”.
The industrial heir (who would weigh the four billion dollars remaining to him from the inheritance of his mother, the queen of cosmetics Estée Lauder) has also promised “significant support” to the museum. This is undoubtedly the most important for the latter after its phenomenal losses in 2020. Private, the Met would have suffered a shortfall of 150 million dollars. Patrons are generally quicker to donate works or participate in constructions than to pay salaries. It remains more glorious to help a group of paintings to enrich themselves than to contribute to the maintenance of the toilets …
A set apart from modes
So it was in 1976 that Ronald Lauder, then 32, began his collection of armor. There were more of them on the market then than today. The American was only interested in the most prestigious. It ranges from an extremely rare Medicean armor that survived the disappearance, out of disinterest, of the Florentine arsenal in the 19th century to a tournament one emerging from the workshops of Greenwich near London. He thus acquired only exceptional pieces, in contradiction with the modernist taste of his contemporaries. His older brother Leonard was then concentrating on Cubist painting, which he also ended up donating to the Met in 2013. But let’s be fair! Ronald is also the greatest lover of works of the Viennese Secession. He thus created the Neue Galerie in New York, where the “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer” shines, bought for $ 135 million in 2006 (1). We know the story of the spoliation of the painting by the Nazis in 1938 and the restitution to the heiress Maria Altmann. It was the subject of a book and then a film, in which Ronald saw himself embodied by an actor much more pleasant on the physical level than is the collector.
Ronald Lauder. Photo DR.
Why this donation? For what reasons now? Speculation is rife. The most obvious is that Lauder is a friend and steadfast supporter of Donald Trump. Last June, the thing earned him, according to Bloomsberg, a sling from Lauder employees. They had demanded his resignation from the Board of Directors. It is therefore time for the man, fervent Republican since the time of Ronald Reagan, to make a smooth transition. It wouldn’t be the first. Politically, after being close to Likud and Benyamin Netanyahu, he distanced himself from them when it came to the Palestinians. On the fine arts side, before getting down to business at the Met, Lauder was “chairman” of the Museum of Modern Art from 1995 to 2005.
President of the World Jewish Congress
It must be said that the man has played a crucial political and moral role as boss of the World Jewish Congress since 2007. A role which makes him take positions favorable to Israel, but which the man wants without endism. Ronald also presents himself as a spearhead of restitution to despoiled families, which allowed him to buy the Klimt. But he got tricked. In an article that quickly disappeared from Net, journalists told how they had asked for the origin and provenance of works belonging to the Neue Galerie. The private museum had not always been able to answer them.
(1) The Neue Galerie offered a Ferdinand Hodler retrospective in 2012.
– .
