Mont Sainte-Victoire by Paul Cézanne, donated to the Museum of Modern Art
Several major American museums will be receiving generous donations from the Henry & Rose Pearlman Foundation.
Henry Pearlman primarily made his money in the refrigeration business, but is mainly known for his incredible art collection, containing countless Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterworks. It all started with a single painting by Chaim Soutine, and from there he began buying works by Manet, Cézanne, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Modigliani. In 1948, he even had his portrait painted by Oskar Kokoschka. Following his death in 1974, his collection has been in the care of the Princeton University Art Museum as a long-term loan. However, with the value of each work steadily rising over the years, insurance and transportation costs have increased as well. This has made it difficult for a single museum to oversee the entire collection. So now, the Pearlman Foundation will be donating all of its sixty-three works of art to three American museums.
The Pearlman Foundation chose these three institutions for very specific reasons. The foundation chose New York’s Brooklyn Museum because of its proximity to Pearlman’s birthplace as well as its history of community engagement. They will be receiving close to thirty works, including several by Modigliani like the portrait of Jean Cocteau and the limestone sculpture Head. Just across the East River in Manhattan, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was chosen mainly for its robust prints and drawings department, which will offer a good home for the Pearlmans’ vast collection of works on paper by Cézanne, among other artworks. And finally, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will be receiving works from the foundation for its “ability to innovate around bringing art to where people are”. Works such as Young Woman in a Round Hat by Manet and Tarascon Stagecoach by Van Gogh will be off to California soon. Both will become the first works by their respective artists to enter the museum’s collection. Foundation president and Pearlman’s grandson, Daniel Edelman, laid out his respective reasons for each museum, commenting, “With very different collections, communities, and presentations of art, these three great institutions share an understanding that museums, their audiences, and how those audiences engage with art, are constantly changing. All three are committed to leading that challenge and inspiring others to meet it as well.” The foundation also encourages these museums to collaborate in the future, swapping or loaning works to present art to different audiences. The Brooklyn Museum’s directors, Anne Pasternak, Shelby White, and Leon Levy, commented on how accessibility was an important issue for Pearlman, and how this donation keeps with that spirit: “Henry Pearlman collected with the public in mind, believing that modern art should inspire audiences of all backgrounds.”
Starting in 2026, the three museums will take turns exhibiting the entire Pearlman collection in a traveling show called Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA. After the exhibition concludes, the museums will receive the works that have been given to them.