Displaying items by tag: leonard a. lauder

Before he became obsessed with Picasso and Braque, there were Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Back in elementary school, Leonard A. Lauder, the 81-year-old philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon, used to go to the movies at the Museum of Modern Art several times a week. Sometimes he would hang out in the galleries, too, soaking up the art. “I didn’t discover Cubism then,” he said. “But just by looking, you learn what’s good.”

Decades later, in 1976, on one of his regular visits to Sotheby’s, Mr. Lauder happened upon a Cubist drawing by Léger that he ended up buying.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has announced plans for a major renovation of its Lila Acheson Wallace Wing. Completed in 1987, the Wing houses the museum’s Modern and contemporary collection, which includes works by the circle of early American modernists around Alfred Stieglitz, including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, and John Marin; large-scale paintings by Abstract Expressionists, such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko; and modern design, from Josef Hoffmann and members of the Wiener Werkstätte to Art Nouveau jewelry by René Lalique.

The Met, which is the largest art museum in the United States, is in the midst of re-evaluating its layout, and addressing the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing’s shortcomings is a top priority. As it stands, the Wing does not allow for a chronological presentation of the museum’s collection, creating a disjointed visitor experience. To remedy the issue, The Met plans to rebuild the Wing, potentially from scratch. Enhanced exhibition space will also allow the museum to better display its Modern and contemporary art holdings, which got a considerable upgrade last spring when philanthropist and cosmetics mogul Leonard A. Lauder donated 79 Cubist paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Woman in an Armchair (Eva) (1913), which was recently gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art by philanthropist and cosmetics mogul, Leonard A. Lauder, is currently on view in the institution’s Lila Acheson Wing for modern and contemporary art. The painting will exhibited for three months as part of a preview of Lauder’s monumental bequest to the museum.

Lauder’s gift, which is said to be worth at least $1 billion, includes 78 Cubist paintings, drawings, and sculptures and will significantly improve the Met’s 20^th century holdings. The gift includes 33 works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), 17 by Georges Braque (1882-1963), 14 by Juan Gris (1887-1927), and 14 by Fernand Léger (1881-1955). The entire Lauder collection will be exhibited at the Met during the fall of 2014.

Woman in an Armchair (Eva) is one of Picasso’s most arresting paintings. A portrait of his mistress, Eva Gouel, the work epitomizes the Cubists’ rejection of the traditional interpretations of space, time, and perspective. The highly eroticized masterpiece was lauded by the founding father of Surrealism, André Breton (1896-1966), in his groundbreaking text Surrealism and Painting (1928).