Experts are calling billionaire Leonard Lauder’s decision to donate his Cubist collection, estimated to be worth some $1.1 billion, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art “transformational.” Let’s hope it also proves transformational for how our political class thinks about billionaires.
The gift includes 78 treasured works: 33 by Picasso, 17 by Braque, 14 by Léger and 14 by Gris. It’s said to be on a par with those from the museum’s biggest contributors, like Walter Annenberg and the Rockefellers. And it will plug a gaping hole in the Met’s overall offerings, catapulting the museum “to the forefront of early 20th-century art,” says director Thomas Campbell.
New York should be grateful. But there are particular lessons here for the left.
To start, being rich doesn’t make you evil. And the accumulation of wealth can enrich others — in countless ways.
Take Lauder. His wealth, put at some $8.1 billion including his art, began with the success of his mother, Estée Lauder, in the cosmetics business. She herself rose from humble roots in Queens, honing her skills in her father’s hardware store.
The family fortune resulted from smarts, risk-taking and hard work. But it was made possible by a free market that encourages folks in those directions, holding out the prospect of vast rewards if they succeed.
Eat away at those incentives — with “reforms,” such as millionaires taxes, that are meant to “share the wealth” — and you erode the motivation to produce.
Pols ask you to believe they would do better by confiscating wealth and redirecting it. Yet public funds are often wasted (or, in New York, stolen), all in the name of causes politicians claim to be championing.
In the end, the business that enriched Lauder has now enriched the Met — and every museum-goer who can’t afford a Picasso or Braque but will now have the chance to enjoy them.