Dick Wolf, creator of ‘Law & Order,’ donates 200 works of art to the Met Museum
Dick Wolf, the creator of ‘Law & Order’, has given it a promised gift more than 200 works – including paintings, sculptures and drawings – for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections of Renaissance and Baroque art. He is also donating a significant sum of money, the Met announced Wednesday, adding that two galleries would bear his name.
Wolf has been a discreet collector in the art world, turning his attention to older works at a time when the most well-known collectors are investing in modern and contemporary art. Some of his promised gifts to the museum were also recent purchases, including a 15th-century Botticelli painting that sold for a prize. $4.6 million in 2012 and a 16th-century painting by Orazio Gentileschi that sold for $4.4 million in 2022. The Gentileschi can already be seen in the recently reopened European painting galleries; Wolf also donates a work by Artemisia, the artist’s daughter, for which it was sold $2.1 million that same year.
Max Hollein, director and CEO of the Met, said he and the museum’s curators have built a relationship with the television producer over the past three years; however, he stayed away from giving advice on the market.
“I never wanted to be too presumptuous,” Hollein said in an interview. “But I think he was already thinking about the Met.”
The collection also includes a $2.8 million painting by van Gogh, sold in 2022, ‘Beach at Scheveningen in calm weather’, one of his first oil landscapes. The painting was made in 1882, on the beach outside the fishing village of Scheveningen, but the artist later left the image in a crate with about 40 works. His family kept the chest with a carpenter, who later sold its contents for the equivalent of 50 cents to a junk dealer named Johannes Couvreur.
A museum spokeswoman declined to give a specific amount for the donation, which will see Wolf’s name appear on two galleries in the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, but said it was in the tens of millions of dollars.
Wolf declined an interview but said in a statement that his appreciation for art began when he visited the Met as a child on his way home from school. “It was a simpler time, there was no access, you could walk in from the street,” he said. “I am sure most collectors would agree that it is an honor to have your art on display in the greatest museum in the world.”
Hollein characterized Wolf’s donation as one of the most meaningful gifts to the museum in recent history.
“The collection reflects Dick Wolf’s outstanding connoisseurship and enduring dedication to the diverse artistic media of the period,” he said. “In addition, the substantial financial contribution will provide critical support for the Met’s collection exhibitions and scholarly activities.”