When it comes to expanding their collections, museums cannot always do it alone—they often need deep-pocketed patrons to step in and help them obtain particularly expensive art. Below is a look at seven collectors who gave notable artworks to museums over the past 12 months.
-
Ronald S. Lauder
Image Credit: Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York to Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Met gained a significant donation from Ronald S. Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder fortune and a fixture of the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list since the inaugural 1990 edition. This past May, Lauder revealed plans to merge his New York private museum, the Neue Galerie, with the Met. Alongside that museum, Lauder and his daughter Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer also said they would give the Met 13 works from their holdings, including Gustav Klimt’s 1916–17 painting The Dancer, featuring a bare-breasted woman surrounded by flowers. Met director Max Hollein said the gift would significantly grow the museum’s holdings of Austrian and German Expressionist art.
-
John A. Pritzker
Image Credit: ©Man Ray/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris to Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Billionaire investor John Pritzker, who appeared on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list from 2005 to 2017, gave 188 Dada and Surrealist artworks to the Met last September. Of that trove, 35 works were by Man Ray, which formed the core of a recent Met survey of the artist’s use of photography, in particular his production of rayographs, which he made without a camera. Known as the Bluff Collection, the group of works from Pritzker’s holdings also included a Max Ernst collage, works on paper by Marcel Duchamp, and photographs by Charles Sheeler, Lee Miller, and others.
-
The Family of Otto Kallir
Image Credit: Courtesy Kallir Research Institute, New York to Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Met is not the only museum whose holdings of Austrian Expressionism have been enriched in the past year. The family of Otto Kallir, the dealer behind the storied Galerie St. Etienne, gave LACMA 130 works related to the movement. The bulk of those works are drawings, posters, and prints, but there are paintings too, among them an Egon Schiele picture of a sawmill and a Gustav Klimt portrait of an elegantly dressed woman. Neither artist had ever had a painting in the LACMA collection before. Alongside the LACMA gift, the family also donated Viennese books, prints, and portfolios to the Getty Research Institute.
-
Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez
Image Credit: Courtesy Jean Pigozzi Collection of African Art/©SKPEAC to Tate, London, and Pérez Art Museum Miami
Having previously given a nearly 20-foot-wide Joan Mitchell painting to Tate Modern in April 2025, Top 200 collectors Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez gave yet more works to the London-based museum network in November 2025. Some 36 works from their collection, all by artists from Africa and the African diaspora, went to Tate, among them a wood relief by El Anatsui, a photograph by Seydou Keïta, a textile by Abdulaye Konaté, and works on paper by Wangechi Mutu. The following month, Jorge gave 82 works to the Pérez Art Museum Miami; all of the pieces, by artists ranging from Ana Mendieta to Wolfgang Tillmans, had already been on view at the institution.
-
Richard and Luba Barrett
Image Credit: Courtesy National Gallery, London to National Gallery, London
Dallas-based collectors Richard and Luba Barrett gave three works by Swiss artists to the National Gallery in July. The most important piece of the trio is Achilles discovered among the Daughters of Lycomedes (1787–88), which now counts as the first oil painting by Angelica Kauffmann, a leading artist of the Neoclassical movement, to enter a British museum collection. A portrait of the writer Louis Montchal by Ferdinand Hodler and a painting of trees by Alexandre Calame also joined the museum’s holdings.
-
Diana and Moises Berezdivin
Image Credit: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. to National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Puerto Rican collectors Diana and Moises Berezdivin gave nearly 50 works to the NGA, aiding in that institution’s goal of increasing its holdings of work by Latinx artists. The gift features star artists from the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America, including Rafael Ferrer, Chemi Rosado-Seijo, Priscilla Monge, and Allora & Calzadilla. The addition of Allora & Calzadilla, who became the first Puerto Rican artists to represent the US at the Venice Biennale in 2011, is also significant as the NGA had never owned one of the duo’s works before.
-
William P. Healey
Image Credit: Courtesy Phoenix Art Museum to Phoenix Art Museum
This past June, ahead of a show devoted to his collection at the Phoenix Art Museum, real estate developer William P. Healey donated 185 works by Indigenous artists to the institution. Among the artists included in this “transformational” gift are Fritz Scholder, a Luiseño painter who responded to stereotypes surrounding Native Americans; Kay WalkingStick, a Cherokee Nation citizen whose art subverts the landscape genre, and Cara Romero, a Chemehuevi photographer whose pictures imagine fantastical futures for Indigenous people.