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On our last visit, the Lehman gallery was being renovated, limiting the range of objects on display.  Join us for this follow-up tour to see more of this magnificent collection.

Robert Lehman was head of Lehman Brothers investment bank, assuming leadership of the family-owned business upon his father’s retirement. At that time, Lehman Brothers was essentially a one-office firm.  He guided his company through the perils of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression of the 1930s. Post-war, he grew the company substantially, expanding to Paris, France to meet the financial needs of his clients with international operations. In the process, he made himself one of the wealthiest people in the United States.

While Robert Lehman left behind a record of considerable achievement in the business world, it is in the field of art where he established his most enduring legacy.  His collection—one of the most extraordinary private art collections ever assembled in the United States—was presented to the Metropolitan Museum by the Robert Lehman Foundation in 1969, following Mr. Lehman's death. The collection consists of nearly three thousand works of art, which had been assembled by Mr. Lehman, a longtime Museum trustee, and by his father, Philip.

When a portion of Robert Lehman's collection was exhibited at the Orangerie in Paris in 1956, it garnered accolades from French critics who might not have expected the scion of an American investment banking family to display such refined taste and robust instincts in the field of fine art.Thanks to Lehman's acute connoisseurship and adroit negotiation of the art market, the collection is extremely strong in several areas of European art. Its approximately three hundred paintings favor the Italian Renaissance, especially the Sienese school, and the early northern masters, but range as far afield as the Fauves and beyond. Its more than seven hundred Old Master drawings include a rich trove of eighteenth-century Venetian works as well as other important Italian, French, and northern examples. The remaining two thousand objects in many media in the collection fall into the category of decorative arts; the concentrations of Venetian glass and Renaissance majolica are particularly noteworthy.

Andree Caldwell, who has been lecturing at the Metropolitan for over 25 years, will once again lead our tour.  She holds two masters degrees in Fine Arts. 

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010