The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened the Loan Exhibition of the Lehman Collection, announced by the museum as the most extensive public showing yet of one of the largest private collections in the United States. Robert Lehman, banker, collector, and philanthropist, had built a collection noted for old master paintings, drawings, decorative arts, and Renaissance objects. The January 9 opening made a private collection temporarily public at a major encyclopedic museum, foreshadowing the deeper institutional relationship that culminated after Lehman's death in the Met's Robert Lehman Collection.
The exhibition strengthened the public profile of a collection that later became a major dedicated department at the Met.