Leonard Lauder (1933-2025)
June 20 2025
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Several obituaries have appeared online (1) (2) commemorating the life of the collector and philanthropist Leonard Lauder who died at the age of 92 last week. His longstanding connections to both the MET and the Whitney Museum of American Art feature prominently within the articles.
To quote Artnet's obituary linked above:
The son of Joseph and Estée Lauder (born Josephine Esther Mentzer), he helped grow her namesake business, founded in 1946, into a company with global reach for women’s makeup and face creams, while also donating millions to museums and medical research.
That included a gift valued at over $1 billion, featuring 78 works from his Cubist art collection to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, including work by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris. Lauder acquired many of these pieces from leading Cubist collectors such as Gertrude Stein, Raoul La Roche, and Douglas Cooper.
