Dick Wolf donates 200 priceless Renaissance and Baroque artworks to the Met Museum, accompanied by a sizeable monetary gift
The creator of “Law & Order,” Dick Wolf, has pledged to donate more than 200 pieces of art, including paintings, sculptures, and drawings, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s holdings of Renaissance and Baroque works.
The Met announced that he is also giving a sizable donation and that two galleries will bear his name.
When the most well-known collectors were investing in new and contemporary art, Wolf was a modest collector in the art world, concentrating his attention on earlier pieces.
A 15th-century Botticelli artwork that sold for $4.6 million in 2012 and a 16th-century Orazio Gentileschi picture that sold for $4.4 million in 2022 are just two examples of the recent acquisitions that made up some of his pledged gifts to the museum.
A picture by the artist’s daughter Artemisia, which sold for $2.1 million that same year, is also being donated by Wolf, and the Gentileschi is already on display in the recently reopened galleries of European artworks.
The director and CEO of the Met, Max Hollein, stated that over the previous three years, he and the curators at the museum developed a relationship with the television producer; nonetheless, he refrained from any market advice.
“I never wanted to come across as overly confident,” Hollein stated in an interview. “However, I believe he was already considering the Met.”
One of the earliest oil landscapes by van Gogh, “Beach at Scheveningen in Calm Weather,” which sold for $2.8 million in 2022, is also included in the collection. The picture was painted in 1882 on the beach outside of Scheveningen, a fishing community. However, the artist later left the painting inside a crate with about 40 other paintings.
His family had the container kept with a carpenter, who thereafter sold the contents to Johannes Couvreur, a junk dealer, for the equivalent of fifty cents.
A representative for the museum stated that the endowment, which guarantees Wolf’s name appears on two galleries in the department of European sculpture and decorative arts, is in the tens of millions of dollars, but she would not disclose the exact amount.
Wolf said in a statement that he first became interested in art as a young boy, going to the Met on his way home from school. “It was an easier time, you could just walk in off the street, there was no admission,” he remarked. “It is an honor, I’m sure most collectors would agree, to see your art on display in the greatest museum in the world.”
According to Hollein Wolf’s donation is among the most significant ones the museum has received recently.
Dick Wolf’s outstanding connoisseurship and unwavering devotion to the many artistic mediums of the eras are evident in the collection.
“In In addition, the sizeable monetary donation will offer vital support for the Met’s collection exhibitions and academic endeavors.”