Do the Right Thing, Times Magazine

Republican powerbroker, philanthropist, media player and now founder of New York’s latest, brightest museum, cosmetic heir Ronald Lauder collects new roles as well as Old Masters.

Cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder is eating Apfelstrudel in the café of the Neue Galerie, his new museum for German and Austrian art in uptown New York. "Taste this, you will go crazy," he tells me. "It’s even better than in Vienna." The cake is sublime, but then Lauder has been getting quite a few things right lately — and his tastes extend well beyond patisserie. The Neue Galerie is a triumph, and its creator has also recently won a $355-million lawsuit against the Czech Government over a media deal gone wrong. As the world’s most prolific art collector, he has a wide-ranging appetite for anything from medieval armour and Old Masters to contemporary painting. We're sitting at his favourite table — his Stammtisch as he calls it in flawless German — of the Café Sabarsky, decorated with two stars for its superb Viennese cuisine and named after his life-long friend Serge Sabarsky, co-founder of the Neue Galerie.

Lauder looks like his mother Estée, now in her nineties, to whom he is close: deep-set blue eyes. patrician nose, imposing manner. He is quite shy, which is endearing in a major philanthropist and benefactor who has a finger in so many pies that the major ones alone list as follows: as Chairman of MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), he is involved in overseeing the museum's ambitious expansion programme; as Chairman of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, he is committed to rebuilding Jewish life in central and eastern Europe; as Chairman of the Commission for Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress, he helps Jews to reclaim artworks lost during the Second World War, a former US ambassador to Austria, he is a Republican with strong political interests and networks across the globe; and last, but certainly not least, he is the chairman of Clinique Laboratories Inc, part of the Estée Lauder empire.

At 59. Ronald Lauder gives the impression of a man in his prime. He is at his most enthusiastic when he talks about the Neue Galerie, on 86th Street and Fifth Avenue, which opened in November 2001. It has put him on the international map among a wider audience of museum-goers. Even the most jaded and spoilt cultural globe-trotters enthuse over this jewel of a restored Beaux-Arts townhouse, filled with superb German and Austrian paintings, furniture and jewellery, well over 1,000 works, concentrating on the first two decades of the 20th century.

It’s amazing the effect it has had upon the city," he says, beaming. "Strangers stop me in the street, and say thank you," which is exactly what the architect Frank Gehry told me when I interviewed him about his celebrated Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The fact is, a new cultural meeting-place cheers people up, even in sophisticated New York, and they are grateful.

"It has set a new standard for New York," says Jeffrey Peabody, senior director at Matthew Marks, one of the city’s hottest downtown contemporary galleries. "This city is not exactly starved of first-class art institutions, but the Neue Galerie is right up there with them." Its name means New Gallery, derived in part from the Neue Galerie founded in Vienna in 1923, which was a showcase for the work of Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and other Secession movement artists.

Its success has to do with its small size - the very antithesis of a museum such as the Guggenheim. which has created franchises around the world. The Neue Galerie has become a new kind of museum brand, used by lawyers and consultants as a case study. "It’s a media phenomenon," says Renée Price. its director. "It has become a trade-mark in 14 months. People are always asking, 'Who lives here?'" The museum is like an elegant home where visitors can enjoy the atmosphere as much as the art. When I visited, the café's pastry chef took a break from the kitchen by playing the Chopin Nocturne Op. 37 No. 1 in G minor on the Bösendorfer grand piano, "which makes us rather different from other venues", Price says.

Estée and Joseph Lauder in the early Eighties

Lauder’s collecting is much in evidence here, with first-rate works by Klimt, Schiele, Max Beckmann and others. "There's only one element you need to be a good collector, and that is passion," he says. “I think an 'eye' is learnt. I learnt from my mother that you have to pursue the best, and I do have the ability to recognise the best pieces an artist has.” His own collection, which he keeps in various properties, is vast: rare medieval armour, objects such as stones, medals, acquamanile (jugs for hand-washing), 19th and 20th-century paintings, drawings and sculpture and contemporary art. "Ronald Lauder is the most important collector today," says Simon de Pury, chairman of Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg. "He is the only one who spans as many different fields and is relevant in all of them."

But Lauder not only collects for himself, he also
restores to others. As Chairman of the Commission for Art Recovery, he is the patron of efforts to help Jews to reclaim what had been their property. Lauder has called these works of art "the last prisoners of war" in testimony before Congress. "You are talking about hundreds of thousands of pieces throughout Europe," he says. "A lot of them can't be traced back. and most collectors did not keep the type of records that they keep today." Indeed, The New York Times reported last February that Lauder himself had been criticised for being less than upfront and too slow about checking the provenance of his own art. His power in the New York art world is considerable, as he is all at once a prominent collector, the Chairman of the Modern and the founder of the Neue Galerie; on occasion these different roles do not sit easily with
each other.

Ronald, Estée, and Leonard Lauder in 1972

Many works by Schiele and Klimt. two artists he collects, were owned by Jews who later perished in the Holocaust Lauder says all the paintings in the Neue Galerie are accounted for, but is frank about the difficulties of provenance, which became a hot issue only relatively recently. When he started collecting in the Sixties few people cared about it. "Because you're so interested in trying to help in this field. you have to be better than anyone else," he says. "We have done exhaustive searches on our provenance... but sometimes it’s impossible to figure it out. If you are dealing with a Matisse painting, it has a whole history, but when you're dealing with German and Austrian works of art there is no real record kept, particularly with watercolours, drawings and furniture." He says the museum hopes to post all the research on its website within the next year, part of a commitment by the American Association of Museums two years ago to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets. Price comments that "if someone wants to hide what they have, they don't open a museum".

“My Mother was unbelievably dynamic, she is a career woman who understands how to be a Mother”

She says the Neue Galerie has changed people’s perceptions about Lauder, a line echoed by other people I talked to. Before, there was a view that while he was a high- profile collector, his ambitions for political office and business acumen were not as successful (although even back in 1996, it was reported in The New York Times that the canny and perfectly legal way in which Lauder and his mother minimised the tax due on one large share transaction had inspired the Clinton administration to consider changing tax law). Now, he is seen as a man who not only dreams things, but gets them done, even when the going gets tough. An example is his ownership of Central European Media Enterprises (CME), the Nasdaq-listed television broadcaster, which has just come good. Lauder sued the Czech Government for not intervening when a local broadcaster sought control of CME’s flagship, TV Nova; last April a Stockholm arbitration tribunal awarded Lauder $355 million in damages.

"He turns out to be quite good," says Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s finance minister, and a friend of Lauder's. "Some say, 'He was born with a golden spoon, but has a leaden mind...' Not so. In business, he’s either very lucky or very shrewd, and I think he's both." Publisher Lord Weidenfeld calls Lauder "a great cultural force, a mixing of politics, education, lobbying, culture — he is unique".

Lauder's own provenance gives a clue to the man. His uniqueness stems from his mother, who with his father Joseph built up the Estée Lauder Companies in the Thirties, when Estée, then Josephine Esther Mentzer, started selling skin-care products formulated by her uncle John Schotz. She had two sons, Leonard and Ronald. Leonard, 11 years older than his brother, now runs the £4.2billion US stock market-quoted company. "Leonard has done a terrific job," says Richard Parsons, Chief Executive of AOL Time Warner. "But if you want to find the real true genius of them all, it was Mrs Lauder — she is some piece of work, that one." Parsons is a trustee to Ronald’s children, and says the brothers' strengths are different. "Leonard took over what Mrs Lauder had started and built it into a global business. He is a terrific builder and steady manager. Ronald is much more like his mother. He is a brilliant entrepreneur: he starts things, and then he passes them on to better professional management, and starts something else."

The Estée Lauder motto is "Bringing the Best to Everyone We Touch", something that Lauder apparently learnt at an early age. He says he inherited his mother’s gregarious side and her love of people, and also her sense of beauty and aesthetics. "I am a good drawer, and I could do your picture," he tells me. "I have good eye-hand co-ordination."

To prove it, he asks me to sign my name, and then he copies it. well enough to pass as my signature. He remembers doing a drawing at six years old of how he wanted his room to look, with a table, chairs, a "rounded desk, with softened edges. I wanted bookshelves, even though I didn't have any books". There was a picture over the fireplace, "which happened to be a Toulouse-Lautrec poster". Estée told her son that "no matter what you do, be successful, and do it well". "My mother was unbelievably dynamic, she is a career woman who understood how to be a mother at the same time. At that time it was never done. She is a very unique combination, even today."

Theirs was a close family, but the business meant everything, which must have been lonely at times. There is a straight line from designing his own room to make a perfect world to creating the Neue Galerie. "Everything was wrapped up together," Lauder says. "Our family and our business were one and the same, as the business had the name of our family. It was hard to say where one stopped and the other started." The same still holds true today, one of the great strengths of the business. Leonard's wife Evelyn, their two sons William and Gary (in their forties). and Ronald’s two daughters Aerin and Jane (in their thirties) all have senior positions within the company.

“Running for office again is not completely out of his system. Those fires burn deeply.”

Lauder’s work ethic is deeply engrained, and he is driven in everything he does: "What motivates me is that I live every day as if it was my last," he says. He was brought up in New York. attended the Bronx High School of Science, and was also sent to schools in France and Germany where he perfected his languages. He holds a bachelor's degree in International business from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His business career started in 1964, at Estée Lauder International in Belgium, and by 1983 he had risen to executive vice-president of Estée Lauder Inc. That same year he was appointed by President Reagan to serve in the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for European and Nato policy. Lauder made lasting and influential contacts at that time, such as US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is great friends with Lauder and his wife of many years, Jo Carole. In 1986 Reagan sent him to Vienna to serve as the US Ambassador to Austria, his first diplomatic appointment, which was to change his life.

It was in Vienna that Lauder discovered his Jewish roots. In typical Lauder fashion, this was to have long-lasting consequences for a whole range of people, as if he wanted them all to share in his new-found cultural awareness. He started the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, which helps revitalise Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe. It has helped 10,000 families since 1987 in 15 different European countries. There are Lauder educational initiatives in places such as Bucharest, Romania; Minsk, Belarus; Tallinn, Estonia; and Wroclaw, Poland. "There is nothing more fulfilling than changing children's lives," Lauder says. There are 17 formal schools and kindergartens, and 15 other educational projects.

The foundation's work also benefits the local ministries of education who get a shot in the arm from Lauders efforts and financial help, which currently stands at tens of millions. "Without Jewish education there will be no Jewish present and future," says Dr George Ban. the foundations chief executive officer. "Jewish children don't necessarily hear about their roots and culture, and in two or three generations they will be fully assimilated. We want to help integrate them and keep their Jewishness." He says progress is such that the educational initiative can now be managed by the local Jewish communities "We planted the seeds; the flowers are now in bloom and should learn how to water themselves."

The Lauder money is obviously a huge asset, but it has not always helped Lauder in his political ambitions. The main challenge in his life has been the realisation that he is more suited to appointed than elected office. He tried to run for Mayor of New York City in 1989, On the Republican side, but lost out at the primary stage to one Rudolph Giuliani. "He [Lauder] had to cross the divide, which is very hard," Netanyahu says. "And I think he is obviously not a good stump politician. You're automatically handicapped by great wealth, but in addition it is not in his nature politics does not lend itself to irony or to a very subtle approach. Understanding your own limitations. and realising that you can only influence in other ways is not an easy thing for someone like Ronald, who is used to having his own way in most things."

Lauder clearly makes a good diplomat and friend. It is a measure of the man that Netanyahu and Parsons took time out to speak to me in a crucial week for both — Netanyahu had a key Israeli cabinet vote on the "road map", and Parsons announced the resolution of AOL Time Warner’s lengthy dispute with Microsoft. Both acknowledged Lauders considerable negotiating skills and sense of humour. Parsons, a black American corporate star. says several years ago he had dinner with Lauder, and the latter — two years older than Parsons — told him: "You know, Dick, we're really the same, you and l, except for a couple of years and a couple of billion dollars."

As for diplomacy, Lauder shuttled back and forth on Netanyahu’s behalf, helping negotiations on the Golan Heights issue with President Assad of Syria. "I think he captivated President Assad with his New York Jewish humour," Netanyahu says. "He cracked New York jokes with him. Ronald has a quick wit and sharp intelligence. It also helped that he had his own private plane." Almost 20 years ago Lauder smoothed Netanyahu’s path when the latter was Israel’s ambassador to the UN, making introductions and helping with contacts in Washington. As US ambassador in Lauder took a firm stance against the then Austrian President Kurt Waldheim’s Nazi past and tenure of high office.

Lauder’s skills and sophistication may yet land him another plum job. Parsons thinks running for office again is "not completely out of his system". So what kind of office? "I don't have anything specific in mind, I just know that those fires burn deeply. They may be under control for a period of time, but if the right opportunity presented itself, they would come back to life." In the meantime, there is life to breathe into other projects, whether it’s the expansion of New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) or Israel’s water problems, both of which he is looking at very closely.

Parsons says Lauder is rather like his first boss: "I think his interest in public service reminds me of someone I started out with, Nelson Rockefeller. This was a person who was born with the means to take the easy road. but felt a sense of stewardship for this society and this world, and developed skills and abilities to help others." It certainly applies to Lauder’s activities, be they cultural. charitable political or business: he wants to improve upon the status quo, and help others in the process. When I ask the man himself how he wears all these different hats, he just laughs and says, "I'm exhausted."