A major collection of 63 Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and modern works is to be donated to The Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
The gift, from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, includes works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, Edgar Degas, Chaïm Soutine, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and more. The Brooklyn Museum will receive 29 works including those by Degas and Modigliani; LACMA will receive six works including those by Manet and van Gogh. MoMa will receive 28 works including pieces by Cézanne.
The Pearlman collection began in 1945, when the businessman Henry Pearlman bought a Soutine landscape painting, triggering a lifelong passion for collecting art. After Henry passed away in 1974, his wife Rose took over management of the collection until she died in 1994. Since 1976, the collection has been on loan to the Princeton University Art Museum.
“For years, we have explored every model we could imagine for the future ownership and guardianship of this collection,” said the foundation’s president Daniel Edelman in a statement. “We ultimately chose the Brooklyn Museum for the works that tell Henry’s story of discovery and for its commitment to engaging a diverse community; LACMA for works that specifically enhance their ability to innovate around bringing art to where people are; and MoMA, where Cézanne’s works on paper will be shared and cared for by one of the finest departments of drawings and prints that we know, as well as a half dozen of his paintings that together support the artist’s foundational role in the story of modern art.”
The gifted works will be part of an upcoming exhibition, “Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA and MoMA.” The show is set to open at LACMA in February 2026 before traveling to the Brooklyn Museum in July 2026. A MoMA show featuring the works is also planned for “the near future.”
“We’re thrilled to welcome this extraordinary gift from the Pearlman Collection—the most significant addition to our European art holdings in nearly a century,” said Anne Pasternak, Shelby White, and Leon Levy, directors of the Brooklyn Museum in a statement. “Henry Pearlman collected with the public in mind, believing that modern art should inspire audiences of all backgrounds. Between 1960 and 1986, the Brooklyn Museum presented six exhibitions dedicated to the collection, and now, nearly 40 years after the last of those presentations, we’re honored to give a group of these masterworks a permanent home in the borough where the Pearlman family grew up. As important, we are excited by the Foundation’s strategy of collection sharing with our wonderful peers, MoMA and LACMA.”