Building wealth and a business empire, they claimed their success was simply good fortune: “Europe had plenty of works of art to sell, and America had plenty of money to buy.” The sellers included Europe’s landed classes, and the buyers were the socially mobile oligarchs weaving trans-Atlantic identities as they built institutions that still define us today. Duveen-driven collections undergird the reputations of Frick, Morgan, Huntington, Widener, and Mellon and the legacy institutions they founded. What makes the firm—even at the distance of a century from its apogee—seem almost mythic in its role, influence, and legacy?

Join us for a lively exploration of the spectacular and consequential facets of the Duveen story.