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Cubist Art Donation Worth More Than $1 Billion Comes To Met Museum

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The Metropolitan Museum of Art has received a donation of Cubist art worth more than $1 billion from the emeritus chairman of Estee Lauder.

The museum announced this week that Leonard A. Lauder, 80, had donated his collection of 78 works, including 33 by Pablo Picasso, 17 by Georges Braque, 14 by Juan Gris, and 14 by Fernand Léger.

The highlights of the collection include Picasso's "The Scallop Shell" from 1912, "Woman in an Armchair" from 1913, and "Still Life with Cards, Glasses, and a Bottle of Rum 'Vive la France'" from 1914.

In coordination with the gift, the Met will start a new research center for modern art, supported by a $22 million endowment from Lauder and other museum trustees and benefactors, officials said.

The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art will be the first center to focus exclusively on modern art in an encyclopedic museum, the Met said.

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