Ronald Lauder

On November 16, 2001, Lauder opened the Neue Galerie in New York, an art museum dedicated to art from Germany and Austria from the early 20th century. It holds one of the best collections of works by Egon Schiele in the world.

On June 18, 2006, he purchased from Maria Altmann and her family, the painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt for $135 million, the highest price ever paid for a painting at that time. Lauder called the painting "Our Mona Lisa". He reportedly saw Klimt's portrait as a youth in Vienna and had admired it since.[11][12] The painting, a Nazi-looted art piece which had just been restored to Altmann following years of negotiation and litigation with the Austrian government, now forms the centerpiece of the museum's collection.

Lauder also has the world's largest private collection of medieval and Renaissance armor.[13]

Lauder has been criticized for failure to resolve a case involving the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which in 1997 exhibited some paintings owned by Rudolph Leopold, a Viennese doctor and art collector. An investigative article in The New York Times on December 24, 1997 – "A Singular Passion for Amassing Art, One Way or Another" – outlined a case involving Portrait of Wally by Egon Schiele, which was in the MoMA exhibition but was obtained by Leopold soon after the Nazi era. The New York County District Attorney (Manhattan) stepped in to help restore the piece to descendants of its original owner, but ownership of the painting is still in contention, nearly ten years later. Lauder has been accused of a failure to act on the case, despite being MoMA chairman at the time.[14]

Lauder is an honorary trustee of the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based non-profit with the mission of protecting endangered cultural heritage sites around the world.

In 1987, Lauder established the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, a philanthropic organization that is dedicated to rebuilding Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe.[15] The foundation also supports student exchange programs between New York and various capitals in Central and Eastern Europe.

In 1998, Lauder co-founded the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation with his brother, Leonard A. Lauder.[16] Its mission it to "rapidly accelerate the discovery of drugs to prevent, treat and cure Alzheimer's disease.[17]" Ronald continues as the Foundation's co-chairman.

In 2020, Lauder gave 91 pieces of arms and armor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 91-object gift is the museum's most significant since 1942. To honor the gift, the museum's entire group of Arms and Armor galleries is now named for Lauder.[18][19][20]

Lauder with German leaders at a rally against anti-Semitism in Berlin, September 14, 2014. Left to right: Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Protestant Church leader Nikolaus Schneider, Ronald S. Lauder, German Federal President Joachim Gauck, Central Council of Jews in Germany President Dieter Graumann, German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Lauder was elected president of the World Jewish Congress on June 10, 2007,[21] following the resignation of Edgar Bronfman, Sr. He beat the South African businessman Mendel Kaplan and Einat Wilf of Israel by a clear margin.

President George W. Bush appointed him to serve on the honorary delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.[22]

Lauder condemned the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.[23]

In July 2009, Bernie Ecclestone faced calls from Lauder to resign as Formula One chief after he had praised Adolf Hitler in a newspaper interview and said that Hitler "got things done". Lauder said someone with Ecclestone's views should not be allowed to run such an important and popular racing series. He urged Formula One teams, drivers and host countries to suspend their cooperation with him. In reaction, Ecclestone told the news agency Associated Press that "I think the people who are saying that haven't got the power to say these things." Asked if the World Jewish Congress was influential, Ecclestone said: "It's a pity they didn't sort the banks out" and "They have a lot of influence everywhere". After a public outcry, Ecclestone apologized for his remarks and said he had "been an idiot".[24][25][26]

In December 2009, Lauder protested against the Roman Curia's decree recognizing the heroic virtues of Pope Pius XII, asserting that an eventual beatification would be inopportune until the Holy See's historical archives from the 1939–1945 period were opened.[27]

In 2011, writing in the German newspaper Die Welt,[28] Lauder called for Israel to be admitted into the Western defense alliance NATO: "Israel needs real guarantees for its security. European NATO member states – including Turkey – must admit the state of Israel into the Western alliance," the WJC president wrote. He referred to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and said they were reminders of how "unpredictable" developments in the Middle East were. Israeli NATO membership "would send a strong signal to other countries not to take on Israel", Lauder argued.[29]

Lauder addressing a World Jewish Congress meeting in Berlin

Lauder has also been outspoken on anti-Semitism. In an opinion article entitled "Sweden's Shame", he attacked the Swedish government, church officials and media for "fanning the flames" of hatred against Jews.[30]

In May 2012, Lauder condemned as "despicable" remarks made by the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung who had "revived anti-Semitic canards such as Jewish control of the media" and suggested that Israel's Mossad could have been behind the 2011 "massacres in Norway committed by Anders Breivik" in which 77 people died. Lauder declared: "There is a growing tendency to blame the Jews for all evil that happens under the sun. It is a scandal that a leading academic such as Galtung does not shy away from citing notorious forgeries such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to support his bigoted arguments."[31]

In August 2012, Lauder criticized Austrian politicians for failing to publicly denounce the leader of the third-largest political party in the country, the FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, who had posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on his Facebook page. "Clearly, and not for the first time, the FPÖ leader is trying to whip up anti-Semitic sentiment. His repeated denials are not credible because his words and actions speak for themselves," Ronald Lauder said in a statement, adding: "This scandal shows that anti-Jewish resentment is still widespread, and unscrupulous politicians are allowed to exploit it for electioneering purposes. That is mind-boggling, and it could have negative repercussions for Austrian Jews."[32] The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Vienna Israelite Community) banned Lauder for allegedly interfering in its board elections.[33] IKG President Oskar Deutsch alleged that Lauder had offered incentives to members of the IKG to support another candidate. A Lauder spokesman denied the allegations.[34] In January 2013, it was reported that Deutsch and Lauder had resolved their dispute.[35]

Lauder has been strongly critical of business deals by European energy firms with Iran and called for stronger UN sanctions because of Tehran's threat against Israel and its nuclear program. In April 2008, he criticized a visit by Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey to Tehran where she met with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to help a Swiss company secure a multibillion-dollar contract to buy natural gas from Iran. Lauder told a press conference in Bern: "Maybe that money that Switzerland is paying to Iran will some day be used to either buy weapons to kill Israelis, or buy weapons to kill Americans, or buy missiles to be able to deliver nuclear weapons."[36] Lauder also led diplomatic efforts to persuade European businesses to withdraw from Iran. In January 2010, he warmly welcomed the announcement by Siemens CEO Peter Löscher that his company would not seek new business in Iran.[37]

In February 2018, the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated that "there were Jewish perpetrators" of the Holocaust, "not only German perpetrators."[38] Lauder condemned Morawiecki's comment as anti-Semitic, saying: "The Polish prime minister [Morawiecki] has displayed appalling ignorance with his unconscionable claim that so-called 'Jewish perpetrators' were partly responsible for the Nazi German attempt to wipe out European Jewry ... this government is going to extreme and unfathomable lengths to exonerate some of their countrymen's own complicity in the murders of their neighbors. This is nothing short of an attempt to falsify history, that is one of the very worst forms of anti-Semitism and Holocaust obfuscation. We demand an immediate retraction and apology from the Polish government of these absurd and offensive remarks.".[39]

in 2019, Lauder launched the Antisemitism Accountability Project (ASAP) to fund campaigns fighting federal, state, and local candidates who support or promote antisemitism.[40]

The Washington Examiner reported in October 2023 that Lauder announced he was no longer providing financial resources to the University of Pennsylvania over antisemitism concerns following the terrorist group Hamas attacking Israel. [41]

Lauder had donated $1.1 million in 2016 to Secure America Now (SAN). In the same year, SAN broadcast anti-Muslim social media videos in swing states just before the U.S. elections. Lauder disavowed the videos; a spokesman said that he had donated to the group "support their work in opposition to the Iran nuclear deal" (which had concluded in 2015) and "had nothing to do with any of the group's other activities"; the spokesman said that Lauder supported "interfaith respect and dialogue" and "would never be involved with insulting people of faith."[42] The videos at issue may have been targeted at increasing turnout among supporters of Donald Trump.[42]

Lauder is a longtime Republican Party donor.[43] Since 2016, Lauder has donated more than $1.6 million to pro-Donald Trump organizations.[44] In 2020, Lauder donated $1.7 million to a new independent expenditure group that opposed criminal justice reform in New York.[45]

Lauder pitched the idea to Trump to buy Greenland in 2019 from Denmark. In the proposal he proposed to be the intermediary in the transaction which Denmark rejected. His involvement was first reported in a 2022 book The Divider by Peter Baker and his wife Susan Glasser.[46]

His brother supported Kathy Hochul's successful campaign for New York governor in 2022, but Ronald himself gave $11 million to the Republican challenger Lee Zeldin.[47]