Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

The Whitney Museum announced a few days ago that it had received a truly generous donation, the biggest ever to be received by the New York Museum. We are talking about 131 million dollars, donated by the cosmetic industry typhoon Leonard A. Lauder through the The American Contemporary Art Foundation that he is president of. Of this excellent amount, 6 million dollars will be used for the museum’s operative spending, and the remaining 125 will go towards bolstering the institution’s endowment acting as a means of future development for the museum.

The museum that was founded by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1931, started off with a collection of about 700 subjects becoming one of the most important American art collections during the XX century. Today it holds more than 18,000 works attracting millions of visitors each year. And this extraordinary act of freedom will only contribute to enacting its importance and increasing its prestige. According to the declarations by the directors, the donation by Leonard A. Lauder will certainly have a long-term effect on the museum, guaranteeing its development in favour of its future generations too. Thanks to Lauder’s gesture in fact, the overall museum fund increases to 195 million, a balance that will allow it to do big projects in the future. The supplying foundation, The American Contemporary Art Foundation, through which the donation was made, has been in operation since 1999 as a non-profit organization with the scope of circulating art. The foundation operates in favour of public institutions like museums, libraries, universities and galleries for whom acquisition, loan conservation and the donation of works of art are guaranteed. But why did the American millionaire decide to make such a generous gesture towards this institute? The unifying link between Estee Lauder’s beneficiaries to the Whitney Museum is by now dated. Lauder’s adventure as an operative member of the museum began in 1994 when he became president of the board of governors. It was he who was involved in the campaign to collect funds for the construction of a new gallery annexed to the traditional museum building located in Madison Avenue, and projected by Marcel Breuer in 1996, a 5 story building now completely dedicated to the museum’s collection. Lauder declares that the donations bound the museum not to sell this building at least for an undetermined period of time, not clearly specified by him in the agreement.
Furthermore, Lauder participated in the museum’s committee efforts to assure the donations of important works of art during a campaign launched in 2002: this campaign was conducted to gather the widest collection of American post-war art ever to be donated to a museum. In this case too, Lauder’s foundation of which he is president had contributed substantially guaranteeing the best supply of works among which are pieces by Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. Today Leonard A. Lauder decided to again demonstrate his generosity by this extraordinary gesture that as well as offering sure benefits, not only for the museum but also for the American art sector on a whole, will not let its consumer effects go unnoticed.