History:
The
Robert Lehman Foundation Inc. was incorporated in 1943 to serve as a vehicle
for its Founder’s benefactions in the field of the visual arts.
On Mr. Lehman’s death in 1969, his entire collection,
one of the most extraordinary and wide-ranging in the world, was bequeathed
to the Foundation, on which responsibility devolved for carrying out Mr.
Lehman’s wish that the collection be exhibited intact and in perpetuity
in a manner evoking the ambiance of his ancestral home rather than that
of an institutional
collection.
After considering various alternatives, the Foundation entered into negotiations with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an institution especially close to Mr. Lehman’s heart, and of which he had been Chairman. These negotiations were quickly brought to a mutually satisfactory conclusion, and on January 30, 1970, the collection of more than three thousand works of art, dating from the early Renaissance to the 20th Century, was transferred to the Metropolitan Museum, where it is housed today in the Robert Lehman Wing and exhibited in accordance with Mr. Lehman’s wishes.
It
is the mission of the Foundation to fulfill and further Robert Lehman’s
vision and therefore to support the visual arts in any fashion that seems
likely to enhance the appreciation, knowledge and enjoyment of this central
aspect of our culture.
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Page Image: The Creation and the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise,
1445 Giovanni di Paolo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert
Lehman Collection, 1975
