On this trip I was able to visit the Met for only part of
one afternoon. After seeing the special Matisse exhibit, I decided to see what
the Robert Lehman Collection was all about. The wing was built in 1975 to house
a collection donated by Mr. Lehman. The building itself has a rather
attractive, modern-style, open architecture, with a large atrium providing
excellent views of the original Gothic museum building. Lehman's collection
fills 13 galleries on the first floor, and there is an open space for special
exhibitions on the basement level.
Mr. Lehman apparently had a variety of interests, so his
collection includes some excellent Renoirs and other Impressionist paintings,
many Italian Renaissance paintings, an extensive collection of Italian dishes,
and assorted other works along the way.
While these pieces are valuable, the Met would have been
better served by being free to integrate these into their appropriate parts of the museum, rather than required to isolate them as a monument to a particular
donor. Isabella Stuart Gardner and Henry Clay Frick created coherent
collections that made sense to keep in their original locations, but that can't
be said of this collection.
The Museum of Fine Arts has a brand new gallery of art from the Benin Kingdom of present-day Nigeria, which was also donated by Robert Lehman. Who was this person? It turns out to be none other than the third-generation to head Lehman Brothers.
ReplyDelete