Ronald Lauder, a powerful art collector who has patronized institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Trust, and the World Monuments Funds, appears more than 900 times in the set of Jeffrey Epstein–related files that were released by the Department of Justice at the end of January.
Lauder, the heir to the Estée Lauder Company, appears to have met with Epstein multiple times in 2017. While there is no direct communication between Lauder and Epstein, their respective assistants emailed frequently to discuss the arrangement of meals and phone calls for them. Epstein and Lauder were often looped into those email chains.
How many times the two met, or if they even ended up meeting, remains unclear from these emails, which suggest that Lauder’s schedule forced his assistant to frequently change his appointments with Epstein. But Gmail calendar reminders for Epstein imply that the two did, at least, get some meetings on the books.
What they discussed also remains unclear, with just one email offering a vague hint. In a 2017 message from Epstein’s assistant to Lauder’s, Epstein’s assistant mentions that Epstein is seeking a conversation with Lauder’s assistant, to offer his “best guidance.” Epstein’s assistant mentions that he wants to see two years of tax returns by Lauder as well as his will. “I have given Mr. Lauder your message,” the cosmetics magnate’s assistant writes.
Epstein even appears to have wanted to get his colleague, the filmmaker Woody Allen, face time with Lauder. Ahead of one proposed meeting in 2017, Epstein directed his assistant to “tell [Lauder’s assistant] if he is back in town he can join for dinner with woody.” The documents do not say whether that dinner happened, or if Allen ended up attending.
Other documents show that Epstein may have played a role in Lauder’s art-related dealings with Leon Black, another major collector with whom Epstein worked closely. In 2014, a representative for Black emailed Epstein an agreement guiding a loan agreement for a Kurt Schiwtters work. “Leon and Ronald Lauder decided Ronald will ha=e [sic] the first possession period,” the email notes.
Black and Lauder’s ties seem to be confirmed by other documents in this batch of files. One of those documents appears to itemize a multitude of works in Black’s art collection; one of those works is Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting Berlin Street Scene, which appears to have been worth $50 million in 2016. The document says that Black has a 50 percent ownership stake in the work. A Kirchner painting by the same name was acquired by the Neue Galerie, the New York private museum founded by Lauder, which says on its website that the work is co-owned by a private collection.
Another email exchange sees Epstein repeatedly seeking a museum tour from Lauder, who was to walk him and scientist James Watson through an unidentified institution. It’s also unclear if this tour came to fruition.
A representative for Lauder did not respond to requests for comment.
Lauder, a fixture of the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, is widely regarded as one of the top art patrons in the US. He formerly served as chairman of MoMA, where he remains a trustee. A former board member at the Getty Trust, he has also been active at the Met, to which he gave a significant gift of 91 objects to the museum’s arms and armor department in 2020.
Occasionally, his patronage of these institutions has gained scrutiny. In 2024, protestors took to MoMA after the museum hosted an event put on by the World Jewish Congress, an organization led by Lauder. Two years earlier, the World Jewish Congress said it was “unjustified” to propose that Israel had created an apartheid state in Palestine. Lauder himself has described anti-Zionism as “a direct threat to every Jew” in October 2023.
More recently, Lauder has also made headlines for his involvement in the political sphere. A close friend of Donald Trump and a major donor to Republican candidates and causes, Lauder reportedly pushed the US President to agitate for the acquisition of Greenland by the United States.
He is one of several notable art collectors to appear in the Epstein files. While Black’s connections to Epstein were already well-documented, the files released earlier this year also revealed that Epstein had corresponded with Steve Tisch and Jean Pigozzi. Both collectors said they played no role in Epstein’s sex crimes.
