Dick Wolf, a television producer best known as the creator of the ubiquitous legal and police drama Law and Order, gifted the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with more than 200 works and a sum that would be said to be in the tens of millions of dollars to endow two galleries that will now bear his name. The donation, announced on December 20, consists mainly of Renaissance and Baroque works spanning from the 15th to the 18th century, but also includes more recent pieces, such as an early landscape painting by Vincent van Gogh, as well as objets d’art decorative
“From works by the most well-known and beloved artists of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, to those less well-known but of deep historical importance, the collection reflects Dick Wolf’s excellent knowledge and enduring dedication to the various artistic mediums of the period.” Max Hollein, director and chief executive of the Met, said in a statement.
vincent van gogh, Scheveningen beach in calm weather1882 Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Among the treasures included in the gift is that of Artemisia Gentileschi Susana and the elders, Virgin and Child (around 1620) by his father Orazio Gentileschi and a round painting of the same subject by Botticelli, Virgin and Child with the Young Baptist, St. Francis receiving the stigmata in the distance (around 1480). The gift is also rich in pieces by Guercino, Bronzino, Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. The Van Gogh Scheveningen beach in calm weather (1882), was one of 40 works by the artist discovered hidden in a box that had been abandoned in an attic. It sold for $2.8 million at Sotheby’s in November 2022.
“He assembled – with intelligence and a keen eye – a superb collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, furniture and decorative arts that speaks eloquently of the times and places in which they were made,” Don Bacigalupi, the adviser who helped Wolf put it together. that collection, he said in a statement.
In addition to the artworks, Wolf contributed an unspecified sum, a Met spokesman said The New York Times was an eight-figure contribution: to endow two galleries in the museum’s department of European sculpture and decorative arts, which will be named the Dick Wolf Galleries in honor of the gift. Selected works donated by the producer will be exhibited in those galleries; by Orazio Gentileschi Virgin and Child it can already be seen in one of the museum’s recently renovated galleries dedicated to European painting between 1300 and 1800. In the coming years, an installation focusing on a set of drawings from Wolf’s collection will be on display.
Botticelli and study, Virgin and Child with the Young Baptist, St. Francis receiving the stigmata in the distancearound 1480 Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
While Wolf is based in Los Angeles, the gift was partly inspired by fond childhood memories of visiting the museum. “Since I was eight years old, I would stop at the Met on my way home from school, two or three times a month, and wander the galleries,” he said in a statement. “It was a simpler time, there was no entrance, you could enter from the street.”
Wolf has bought several of the endowed works, including pieces by Gentileschi and Botticelli, over the past decade, suggesting he is one of the few serious Old Masters collectors still spending seven-figure sums on the increasingly limited number of major works that they stay in the country. private hands Many more collectors, especially in the entertainment industry, became interested in contemporary and postwar art.
