Collector Leon Black hires Met’s head of drawings to help buy more Old Masters

The US financier Leon Black has hired George Goldner (right), the chairman of the department of drawings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, to help build his collection of Old Master works on paper. Goldner will leave the museum at the end of January, but will serve as an adviser to its director, Thomas Campbell. Goldner, who describes Black as “the greatest collector of our time”, says that the financier started buying Old Master drawings “around 15 years ago” and Old Master prints around five years ago, but that his acquisitions have recently “picked up speed”. Major purchases include Raphael’s Head of a Young Apostle, around 1519, which Black bought at Sotheby’s London in 2012 for a record £29.7m. Goldner says his “proudest achievement” in 21 years at the Met is “building the drawings collection to the point where it is the most comprehensive and best in the US”.