“They are like my children”
Ronald Lauder discusses his art collection, on view at his Neue Galerie for its 20th birthday.
A few years ago, I chatted with Leonard Lauder—eldest son of Estée Lauder—about his art collection, particularly an extensive trove of postcards. I wrote the interview up for artnet and added a reflection in these pages last May. My latest article in artnet draws on an interview with Leonard’s brother Ronald, whose collection is on view at the Neue Galerie for its 20th birthday.
The article—titled “‘I’ve Tended to Run Against the Herd’: Ronald Lauder on How He Built an Eclectic Collection Spanning German Expressionism and Fighter Planes”—unfortunately derives from emailed responses to my questions. A spokesperson for the museum informed that was the only possibility, and when the answers arrived, Ronald Lauder had skipped some of my questions. (That is his right, of course, but it would have benefited readers, I believe.)
The show has an extensive, and beautifully-illustrated catalog, which I recommend to all who want to know more about this remarkable collection. But among the areas that begged for more was an understanding of what the first pieces were that Lauder collected and why, and how he feels about individual pieces. I posed the question in a way I thought would facilitate being very specific:
We asked him—in the style of BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs—to select a few favorite works from his collection, which he would take with him to a deserted island. Lauder said he falls in love with each acquisition.
“They are like my children—I love them each equally but in different ways,” he wrote. “I would have to get a big steamer trunk to bring as much as I could with me.”
Fair enough, but unfortunately not so enlightening.
I did find it very interesting that both Lauders, who are so involved in Jewish activist and philanthropic causes, said that they had little interest as art collectors in Judaica or Jewish art. That is something about which I would still like to know more. Do they not think that there is Jewish art of sufficient quality to meet their standards of connoisseurship? Is there another reason that it is not important to them? Hopefully there will be further opportunity to get to the bottom of this.
Here, again, is the link to the new artnet piece for those interested.
The frustrations of an email interview!