The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has received a major donation from the Lauder family: a historic townhouse gallery on the Upper East Side and Gustav Klimt's 1907 portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer II," valued at $135 million. The gift comes from the estate of Estée Lauder heir Ronald S. Lauder, a longtime museum trustee and collector, and includes the former Neue Galerie building at 1048 Fifth Avenue, which will be renovated to expand the Met's modern and contemporary art exhibition space.
This donation significantly bolsters the Met's holdings and physical footprint, adding a landmark property and a masterpiece of early 20th-century Austrian painting to its collection. The transfer also resolves the future of the Neue Galerie, the museum Lauder co-founded, as its building and key artworks are absorbed into the Met. The gift underscores the continued influence of wealthy collectors in shaping major museum collections and raises questions about the consolidation of institutional power in New York's art world.