Page 169 - Bonhams Passkon and Philanthropy MET Mjuseum March 2024 Asia Week

Fig 2. Portrait of a Lady (Florence Meyer
Blumenthal), 1912, by Giovanni Boldini.
Source: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/
opencollection/objects/4729

parts sold, and the proceeds used to establish a special fund for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. and Mrs. Blumenthal received the
Museum. In total, the works of art he gave to the Museum numbered French Legion of Honor in 1929 for their contributions to the country
in the hundreds and were comprised almost exclusively of European and indeed she also had a street in the fashionable 16th district of Paris
art, with strength in sculptures from 1000-1600 CE, along with a small named after her, Rue Florence Blumenthal.
number of works from Central and East Asia. These contributions
made the Museum one of the premier global collections of European Sources:
art from the Medieval through Renaissance periods. Mr. Blumenthal https://www.jstor.org/stable/3256519
also donated an important collection of classical and modern French http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/ResBlumenthalG.html
books to the New York Public Library, and supported the American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Blumenthal_(banker)
Red Cross, the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic https://projects.mcah.columbia.edu/ma/2019/essay/golden-age-
Societies, the United Hospital Fund, the Sorbonne, and other charities, acquisition-georgeblumenthal%
hospitals, and educational institutions. In addition to choosing many of E2%80%99s-collecting-history
their acquisitions, Mrs. Blumenthal established the Fondation Franco- https://nyti.ms/3QbTG9v
Américaine Florence Blumenthal (Franco-American Florence Blumenthal https://localwiki.org/hsl/George_Blumenthal
Foundation), which awarded the Prix Blumenthal from 1919-1954 to https://nyti.ms/3QbSd2X
painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians, https://nyti.ms/3YaN5Om
with the aim of promoting Franco-U.S. relations. She was an active https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/685678?journalCo
patron of Children’s Hospital and the Sorbonne in Paris, as well as The de=met

PASSION AND PHILANTHROPY: CHINESE ART FROM THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART | 167