Met Receives Major Gift from Dick Wolf

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is to be the recipient of more than two hundred works donated to the New York institution by Dick Wolf, the creator ofLaw & Order. Wolf is additionally gifting the museum an undisclosed sum, said to be tens of millions of dollars, to endow two galleries bearing his name. A native of New York City, Wolf in a statement credited childhood visits to the Met with sparking his appreciation for collecting. “From the time I was eight years old, I would stop at the Met on my way home from school, two to three times a month, and wander the galleries. It was a simpler time, there was no admission, you could walk in off the street,” he said a statement. “I’m sure most collectors would agree that seeing your art displayed in the world’s greatest museum is an honor.”RelatedCARLO SCARPA VASE BOUGHT AT GOODWILL FOR $4 COMMANDS $107,000 AT AUCTIONGIOVANNI ANSELMO (1934–2023) Wolf’s collection, built up over decades, centers around European art of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, spanning the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Among the donated works, which encompass sculpture, painting, drawing, and decorative arts, are a fifteenth-century Botticelli tondo of the Madonna and Child; a sixteenth-century Orazio Gentileschi painting of the same subject; and a work by Gentileschi’s daughter, Artemisia,Susanna and the Elders, dating to the middle of the same century (and embodying the same theme as arecently rediscovered masterworkof the same name by the artist).

Also included are paintings by Bronzino and Vincent van Gogh, as well as drawings by seventeenth-century Bolognese artist Guercino, and the eighteenth-century Venetians Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. “The collection reflects Dick Wolf’s excellent connoisseurship and enduring dedication to the diverse artistic media of the periods,” said Met president Max Hollein in a statement. “Furthermore, the substantial financial contribution will provide critical support for the Met’s collection displays and scholarly pursuits.” The endowed galleries will be in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Art. Currently known as the Quattrocento and Cinquecento Galleries, Galleries 500 and 503, respectively, will be renamed the Dick Wolf Galleries, and will host some of the works donated by Wolf alongside fifteenth and sixteenth-century sculptures and objects from the Met’s collection..