golden palasyo Buy, Donate, Repeat: At 91, Leonard Lauder Has More to Give

In the 1980s, when major collectors were scooping up paintings by Monet and Matisse, Leonard A. Lauder, the philanthropist and cosmetics heir, was forging his own path with Cubism, collecting Picasso and Braque, its pioneers.

Decades before, rather than amassing hotel postcards to send to friends and family, Lauder began collecting them wherever he went.

And when trustees at places like the Museum of Modern Art were writing checks to build new and bigger buildings, Lauder was intent on growing the endowment of the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he is its chairman emeritus.

“Here’s the weird thing about me,’’ he said over lunch in his Manhattan apartment, before a wall of photographs by Irving Penn. “I rarely give money to an institution for their ideas. I create my own.’’

Then he added, “Just as most collectors give a big gift and then it’s over, I never stop.’’

It’s been 11 years since Lauder promised the Metropolitan Museum of Art 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures worth more than $1 billion, a gift that instantly transformed the Met’s Cubist holdings to one that scholars say exceeds such world class institutions as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pompidou Center in Paris.

ImageLeonard Lauder in 1973 in his executive suite at 767 Fifth Avenue, with Robert Dash’s “Open Meadow” (1968).Credit...Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times

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Among national universities, Princeton was ranked No. 1 again, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. Stanford, which tied for third last year, fell to No. 4. U.S. News again judged Williams College the best among national liberal arts colleges. Spelman College was declared the country’s top historically Black institution.

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