Leonard Lauder, heir to mother Estee Lauder's massive cosmetics fortune, has gifted his dazzling collection of Cubist art to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Times reports.
Forbes values the collection at $1.1 billion, a figure we used in calculating his net worth of $8.1 billion for our Billionaires issue, published in early March. The Cubist trove therefore signifies a gift of 13.5% of Lauder's total net worth -- and drops his fortune to $7 billion. It also enshrines him in the pantheon of the most generous philanthropists of all time. Prior to Lauder's gift, only 23 individuals in the world had donated more than $1 billion over the course of their lifetimes. He now stands shoulder to shoulder on that list with the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Eli Broad, George Kaiser, Michael Bloomberg, George Lucas and others (see slideshow below).
The gift of 33 Picassos, 17 Braques, 14 Grises and 14 Légers is unrestricted and will allow the Met to compete with the Museum of Modern Art for the attentions of lovers of Cubist art -- previously, the museum's collection had conspicuously lacked a Cubist presence. He told The Times that if the right pieces come along, he will continue to purchase them to add to the collection.
The haul includes Picasso’s “Oil Mill” (1909), "The Fan" (1911) and "Woman in an Armchair" (1914) ; and Braque’s “Terrace at the Hotel Mistral" (1907), “Trees at L’Estaque" (1908) and “Fruit Dish and Glass” (1912).
Leonard's brother Ronald is also an art collector and cofounder of the Neue Galerie which houses a collection of early twentieth-century German and Austrian art. But while Leonard's collection is tightly composed, Ronald's is massive, exceeding 4,000 pieces from the likes of Gustav Klimt, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Forbes values Ronald's collection at $1.2 billion, also used in determining his $3.6 billion net worth for the Billionaires list.
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