Lectures from the Center for the History of Collecting, Money for the Most Exquisite Things: Bankers and Collecting from the Medici to the Rockefellers, given on March 1 & 2, 2013.
The Center for the History of Collecting hosted this two-day symposium. Twelve speakers examined collecting practices by bankers and merchant-banking families between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, not only the Medici and the Rockefellers, but the Rothschild, David-Weill, and Lehman families, among others. The presentations provoked questions about the ways in which banker-collectors were viewed at different times in history, what motivated their collecting, and what prompted many banks to form institutional collections.
The symposium was made possible through the support of Walter A. Eberstadt, Retired Partner, Lazard Frères and Co. and Antonio Weiss, Global Head of Investment Banking, Lazard Frères and Co.
Quentin Metsys (c. 1466–1530), The Money Lender and His Wife, 1514. Oil on panel. Musée du Louvre, Paris © Giraudon, The Bridgeman Art Library.
