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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\tBlack is best known for the two art purchases that made headlines around the world: Edvard Munch\u2019s 1895 drawing of The Scream<\/em>, for which Black paid nearly $120 million, in July 2012, and a 1931 Picasso sculpture, Bust of a Woman<\/em>, a plaster depiction of the distinctive face of Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Walter, his onetime mistress. Black ended up with the sculpture in June 2016, after a legal dispute between Larry Gagosian, one of Black\u2019s art dealers, and the Qatari royal family, which thought it also owned the sculpture. The saga began when one of Picasso\u2019s daughters, Maya Widmaier-Picasso, supposedly sold the Walter bust, for roughly $42 million, to a representative of the Qatari sheikh Jassim bin Abdulaziz al-Thani. Then, in May 2015, Widmaier-Picasso sold the sculpture again to Gagosian, for $106 million, who was acting on behalf of Black. Obviously, there was only one sculpture and it couldn\u2019t be sold twice. In June 2016, after an agreement between the parties, Black ended up with the Walter bust and the Qataris received an undisclosed financial settlement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBlack\u2019s collection is vast and varied, with everything from a Michelangelo drawing and an original Shakespeare manuscript to ancient Chinese vases and a Jasper Johns painting he shares ownership of with Ken Griffin, the hedge fund manager. There are drawings by Vincent van Gogh and watercolors by J. M. W. Turner and two Raphael drawings for which Black paid nearly $50 million each. As a youth, Black was also \u201can addicted collector,\u201d he told me, of baseball cards, stamps, and coins. Local restaurants in Manhattan would let the young Black rifle through the cash registers looking for pennies, nickels, and dimes that might be rare or unique. Near the Blacks\u2019 apartment, there \u201cwas a little old man,\u201d a philatelist, whom Black would visit on his way home from school. He learned about stamps and stamp-collecting from the man. \u201cI won the international award for my presentation on aviation and stamps,\u201d he said. \u201cYou learn a lot. Part of collecting is researching and learning.\u201d Yes, he conceded, his collecting bordered on the obsessive, but at least it was a healthy obsession. \u201cI\u2019ve always believed one of the things to really be celebrated\u2014and it\u2019s what separates us from animals\u2014is man\u2019s creative spirit,\u201d he told me. That\u2019s one of the main reasons Black said he collects art, as well as the first editions of great literature, poetry, and the original renderings of scientific discoveries. \u201cIt\u2019s almost an obsessive-compulsive sickness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n\tHe used to wreak havoc in museums across Europe that he visited as a teenager because he would stand too close to the artworks. \u201cI like to actually touch the art,\u201d he said. \u201cIn Italy, I set off a number of alarms.\u201d He said he enjoys studying and researching an artist in context while deciding to make a purchase. \u201cI love what you learn,\u201d he said. \u201cAll the research I do about the artist, about his whole career, where this piece fits in it, what else is going on in that time, who else is doing interesting things, what the differences are between them? And you just keep learning.\u201d He also enjoyed the negotiations required to buy a piece of art, \u201chaving been the head of M&A for years [at the now defunct Drexel Burnham],\u201d he said. But, he continued, \u201cYou can only negotiate so far if you\u2019re going to collect quality . . . you can\u2019t think you\u2019re going to be able to get bargains.\u201d He enjoyed being surrounded by his collection. \u201cI love living with the stuff, and am lucky enough to have it in my hands for a number of years,\u201d he continued. \u201cWhen I\u2019m gone, it\u2019ll be passed on to others, whether I create a museum is a possibility for some of it, or it just goes on to others that appreciate it. . . . Each piece gives me a different satisfaction. I never tire of spending time with it. Beauty is special. Creativity is special. And I\u2019m lucky enough to have a great eye.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI was curious how he went from collecting coins and stamps and baseball cards to paying $120 million for an Edvard Munch pastel. \u201cI\u2019ve always liked Edvard Munch,\u201d he said, \u201cand I\u2019ve always felt he is the father of modernism in art. I know a bunch of people have always felt it was Picasso\u2019s Les Demoiselles<\/em>, which is at MoMA, but I actually think it\u2019s The Scream<\/em>.\u201d I asked him to elaborate. He gave me a brief explanation of the various isms <\/em>in art, prior to modernism. \u201cRomanticism is all about nature, actually the terror of nature,\u201d he said. \u201cFrankenstein <\/em>is actually a romantic novel from the Romantic period, but so are the color and the earthquakes or avalanches of Turner. That\u2019s Romanticism. It\u2019s about nature. Impressionism is about other things. But what modernism is all about\u2014what\u2019s called solipsism, which you\u2019ve probably heard of\u2014it\u2019s turning inward into your own psyche, into \u2018God is Dead.\u2019 Nietzsche declares \u2018God is Dead.\u2019 It\u2019s not religious. It\u2019s not about nature. It\u2019s about men turning inward, becoming more [taken] with existentialism, dependent on himself, and that\u2019s a lot of what modernism is. You see it in Surrealism. You see it in Freud\u2019s dreams. So Munch comes out with The Scream<\/em>. That\u2019s the first really iconic image of man turning into himself. Of grappling with being a human and not being a slave to God, who is dead, or to a lot of other isms<\/em>.\u201d He mentioned two Munch artworks from 1894, Anxiety <\/em>and Puberty<\/em>, which depicted a young girl, naked, sitting on the edge of her bed, seemingly in despair, with a large black cloud depicted on the wall behind her. \u201cNo art had been done like it before,\u201d Black said.<\/p>\n \n\tHe resolved to buy The Scream, <\/em>if andwhen one of the versions of Munch\u2019s most famous work became available for the first time. Munch made four different versions of The Scream<\/em>. Two of the versions were painted in 1893, the first of which has on it an inscription, in Norwegian, \u201ccould only have been painted by a madman.\u201d That picture is in the National Museum of Norway, in Oslo. \u201cSmall, dark, and conceptual,\u201d Black told me. A pastel version, also made in 1893, is in the Munch Museum, in Oslo. Two years later, in 1895, Munch painted another, similar version of The Scream<\/em>, pastel on cardboard, as a paid commission for the Olsen family. \u201cIt\u2019s the brightest one,\u201d Black said. \u201cHe writes at the bottom, in Norwegian, that he\u2019s crossing a bridge with some friends, and then he finds himself alone. He\u2019s gripped by anxiety, and he hears Der Schrei der Natur<\/em>\u2014the scream of nature.\u201d Munch painted one more version 15 years later, in 1910, which is also in the Munch Museum, \u201ckind of cartoonish,\u201d Black said.<\/p>\n \n\tIn May 2012, Petter Olsen, a Norwegian shipping magnate, hired Sotheby\u2019s, in London, to sell the 1895 version of The Scream<\/em>. That\u2019s when Black pounced. Sotheby\u2019s allowed him to take the painting home with him for three or four days. \u201cI spent a lot of time with it late at night,\u201d he said. How did he get Sotheby\u2019s to allow that? \u201cThey know I\u2019m a major collector,\u201d he said. \u201cThey know I\u2019m good for it. They know that the chances of me buying something will be enhanced if I can spend some time with it.\u201d He decided it was great and he wanted to have it. \u201cWell, if I decide I have to have something,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean I will pay any price.\u201d The auction took place at night. Black was at home, on the phone with Sotheby\u2019s. He was bidding against Joe Lewis, the British financier\u2014later indicted on charges of passing inside information to his friends as a way to compensate them. The prices kept escalating through $80 million, $90 million, and then $100 million. Black won. He had to pay Sotheby\u2019s commission and then New York State taxes on the entire purchase price. In the end, that came to nearly $120 million, one of the highest prices paid for an artwork to that time. He had no regrets, no buyer\u2019s remorse. \u201cThe only remorse I\u2019ve usually had is when I stopped bidding,\u201d he said. He also said he had regrets when he sold artworks\u2014something he\u2019d done rarely over the years, around 12 times or so. \u201cAn artist like Picasso was great in six or seven different genres,\u201d he continued. \u201cNot only might you buy a few in the same genre, but then you also want the variety of some of the different genres, unless there\u2019s a genre you don\u2019t like. I think Picasso was great from the Blue, Rose, Cubist periods [to] Dora Maar<\/em>. But I don\u2019t particularly like the late Picasso.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPicasso\u2019s Bust of a Woman <\/em>sculpture, for which he paid about double what the Qataris apparently paid for the same thing, seems to cause him a little more agita. \u201cI overpaid for that,\u201d he said, \u201cbut they\u2019re so rare, and that one is such a famous one . . .\u201d He had no idea the sculpture had previously been sold to the Qataris, or how much they had paid. \u201cI didn\u2019t find out until months later,\u201d he said. In fact, his friend Ronald Lauder told him he could have, maybe should have, paid more, given the prices being paid for Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i and Giacometti sculptures. \u201cThis is a much greater piece than the Giacomettis and it\u2019s rarer than the Br\u00e2ncu\u0219is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n\tGeorge Goldner, the Met\u2019s longtime chairman of the Department of Drawings and Prints, recalled how \u201cfor years\u201d Black would urge the Met to buy an Albrecht D\u00fcrer drawing. Goldner explained there were hardly any \u201cgood ones left\u201d and they were unlikely to be sold. He urged Black to think about D\u00fcrer prints, only to hear Black respond that he was not a \u201cprint collector.\u201d Over time, though, Black warmed to the idea of prints, and became a \u201cworks on paper\u201d enthusiast. \u201cWhy works on paper?\u201d he asked. \u201cBecause, to me, again, it\u2019s what gets you closer to the artist and to the originality of the concept of what he wants to do. Sometimes it\u2019s for work on paper, which is the end product, and sometimes it\u2019s a study for a painting that shows him working things out. So, it\u2019s all about the creative process, and it\u2019s more intimate.\u201d At one point, the Met was offered a collection of more than a hundred Old Master prints. \u201cHe bought them all,\u201d Goldner recalled. \u201cLeon became not merely a print collector, but perhaps the <\/em>print collector of our time.\u201d (When Goldner retired from the Met, he went to work for Black, full-time. Coincidentally, he lived near Black, in Bedford, making things even easier.)<\/p>\n \n\tBlack had a symbiotic relationship with the curators at both the Met and MoMA\u2014especially at the Met\u2014where they would keep each other informed about desirable pieces that would be good to have in the Met\u2019s collection or in Black\u2019s. Sometimes, Black would buy the desired artwork and pledge it to the Met. For instance, Black became interested in the work, particularly the drawings, of a German artist, Caspar David Friedrich, who lived mostly in Dresden, from 1774 to 1840. Before Friedrich started painting, in 1807, he created \u201csome of the most fascinating landscape drawings of his time,\u201d according to the Met\u2019s description of him on its website. One of those drawings, completed in 1806, was of a solitary figure on the island of R\u00fcgen, in the Baltic Sea, not far from where Friedrich was born. \u201cThe austere island inspired some of Friedrich\u2019s greatest works, in which he combined a close observation of nature with a pervasive romanticism,\u201d according to the Met\u2019s online description of the artist. \u201cA solitary human figure contemplating the expanse of nature would be a recurring theme in his oeuvre.\u201d No wonder his work appealed to Black. In 2002, Black bought the 1806 Friedrich drawing, Eastern Coast of R\u00fcgen with Shepherd<\/em>, and promised to make a gift of it to the Met. In his book about Friedrich, The Magic of Silence: Caspar David Friedrich\u2019s Journey Through Time<\/em>, the German art historian Florian Illies tells the story about a Hessian collector who was passing by a French antiques shop and purchased, for a few francs, several landscape drawings that were stacked outside the door of the shop. His mother liked one of the drawings so much she hung it for years in her home. Years later, the son was thumbing through a book about the collection of a Dresden art gallery and saw a picture\u2014Friedrich\u2019s, The Great Enclosure<\/em>, from 1832\u2014that looked an awful lot like the drawing that he had bought for a few francs at the French antiques store. He took the drawing from his mother\u2019s house to Dresden to compare it with the one in the gallery. \u201cBoth the curators and the collector were aflame with excitement,\u201d Illies wrote. With his mother\u2019s blessing, the Hessian collector resolved to sell the Friedrich drawing to a dealer in London. With the proceeds of the sale he built himself a house in Seligenstadt, and attached to it a plaque, noting that a Friedrich artwork had made it possible. The London art dealer later sold the Friedrich to \u201ca buyer in New York\u201d\u2014Black\u2014\u201cfor millions,\u201d Illies wrote. Later, Black agreed to lend the artwork to an exhibition but suddenly could not find it in his home. Illies wrote, \u201cWhen a snowstorm hit New York and he searched for a winter coat, he discovered the Great Enclosure <\/em>[study] in the back of the wardrobe. His housekeeper had found it while cleaning the kitchen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnn Temkin, the chief curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA, described Black as a special kind of collector. \u201cI love Leon for his love for works of art,\u201d she explained in Black\u2019s 65th-birthday book, in 2016. \u201cAnd not just any works of art, or even excellent ones, but rather the most absolutely outstanding works of art. Leon is a brutal perfectionist.\u201d She loved engaging him in discussions about art. \u201cLeon\u2019s innate curatorial sensibility is abundantly clear on the astonishing walls of his homes,\u201d she continued. \u201cRumor has it that Leon wanders the rooms reinstalling the art in the middle of the night.\u201d He once spent four hours with Chuck Schumer, the US senator from New York, \u201clovingly describing the pictures that hung in his house,\u201d Schumer recalled, also in the birthday book. In November 2000, Black was named a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of those marquee appointments that announces to New York society that you\u2019ve arrived<\/em>, via both your vast wealth and your exquisite taste. In February 2003, the Met named Black a \u201cFellow for Life.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHis Dartmouth art history professor, the late John Wilmerding, told me he was utterly amazed by Black\u2019s art collection. Wilmerding said he thought it was one of the finest in private hands in New York. \u201cIt\u2019s really, really impressive,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat amazes me is not all collectors have this kind of breadth and capacity\u2014Alice Walton is one\u2014but the fact that Leon has collected in such diverse areas, with such a high sense of quality, is staggering. To buy old-master Renaissance drawings, and then Chinese ceramics, Pop Art, standard European masters. It really is breathtaking.\u201d In 2018, MoMA named Black the chairman of its board of trustees. Over the years, he had lent the museum The Scream<\/em> and the Picasso sculpture of Dora Maar. \u201cI believe, unless the work is too fragile, that it should be shared with the public,\u201d he said. \u201cI lend a lot to museums all over the world.\u201d That same year, he donated $40 million to MoMA. It was highly unusual for one person to be on both the Met\u2019s board and the chairman of MoMA, so Black decided to step off the Met board and turned his seat there over to his wife.<\/p>\n \n\tThanks to the January 2026 release of documents in the so-called Epstein files, the world now has an unfiltered understanding of the extent of Black\u2019s extraordinary art collection\u2014at least as of March 2017 (the date of the document)\u2014and of its extraordinary value, estimated to be worth more than $5 billion these days. Among the most valuable artworks in Black\u2019s collection, according to the 2017 appraisal, were Paul C\u00e9zanne\u2019s Le Ch\u00e2teau Noir<\/em> (appraised at $50 million in 2016), Piet Mondrian\u2019s Composition C with Grey and Red<\/em> ($40 million), Constantin Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i\u2019s sculpture La Muse<\/em> ($40 million), Claude Monet\u2019s Nympheas<\/em> ($45 million), and Vincent van Gogh\u2019s Carri\u00e8re pr\u00e8s de Saint-R\u00e9my<\/em> ($60 million). There\u2019s a Cezanne, appraised at $60 million; a Constable, appraised at nearly $19 million; and a Fragonard, at $30 million. In all, the inventory runs to more than 50 pages.<\/p>\n \n\tBlack\u2019s balance sheet also revealed that he had pledged six artworks to MoMA as gifts, including two Richard Serras and a Jasper Johns, and had pledge another dozen artworks to the Met, including a Gauguin and an Ingres. Black had also pledged $52 million to charitable organizations, such as Dartmouth, Rockefeller University, and MoMA, and more than $13 million for his sister\u2019s memorial garden. The Black Family Foundation had made another $9.5 million in charitable donations. By early 2024, he had given $25 million to the Met. He\u2019s given about $100 million to MoMA in the forms of both cash and art.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Epstein files also revealed that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, helped Black obtain loans from a variety of banks, using his valuable artwork as collateral. According to Black\u2019s December 2015 personal balance sheet, he had borrowed $565 million from Bank of America. His personal borrowings, which he guaranteed, totaled $627 million. He also had more than $100 million in cash, most of which was at U.S. Trust. There were also the toys: the 2002 Gulfstream V jet; the 178-foot 1997 Benetti Starfire <\/em>yacht; the 36-foot 1995 Hinckley Picnic Boat; and a variety of automobiles, still worth more than $400,000. And, of course, there was his real estate at the time. The cache also revealed that during the first two months of 2015, Black and his family spent $75,499 on art; $35,052 on clothing (including $13,000 at Bergdorf Goodman); $27,196 on dining out (including one meal at Joe\u2019s Stone Crab for $7,688); $67,333 on alcohol, including nearly $20,000 spent at z alone; $105,880 on professional services; nearly $72,000 on landscaping; $52,225 on utilities; $25,000 on his private jet; $13,440 Leon Black first met Jeffrey Epstein<\/strong> in 1996. When I asked Black if Epstein was charming or just a name-dropper, and whether there were things about him he didn\u2019t like, he replied, \u201cC\u2019mon. This was 30 years ago. He was one of the one thousand people I met every year. Over time, we got friendlier because I did find him interesting.\u201d Over a longer period of time, Black said he engaged Epstein to do some \u201ctrust and taxation and estate planning work\u201d because \u201cI thought he was pretty smart.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tA year later, Black appointed Epstein a trustee to his family foundation, which struck me as a rather intimate act for someone he barely knew. Why had he done that, I wondered? First, Black replied, he wanted me to know that the foundation board \u201cdidn\u2019t do anything. I don\u2019t think we ever had one meeting.\u201d Having said that, he continued, Epstein \u201creally understood tax very well\u201d and had told Black he worked with many other prominent families on tax and estate matters, although that was a boast Black told me he couldn\u2019t confirm directly because of \u201cprivacy and confidentiality\u201d issues. In any event, it was an un-paid, honorary position, so why not invite a guy who was an expert in tax and estate planning onto the board of his family foundation?<\/p>\n \n\tEpstein-controlled trusts would eventually be involved in Black\u2019s art deals. The New York Times <\/em>reported that, in 2016, Black used a 1031 exchange, a provision that allows real-estate investors to swap one investment property for another without incurring a capital gains tax, to sell an Alberto Giacometti sculpture, Figure Moyenne II<\/em>, for $25 million to a trust\u2014the Haze Trust, controlled by Epstein\u2014and then the same day used the proceeds to buy a Paul C\u00e9zanne painting, Portrait de Vallier de Profil<\/em>, for $30 million. He avoided capital-gains taxes on the sale of the sculpture. The Haze Trust had also bought a Georges Braque painting from Black for $5 million, in another 1031 exchange. Black used the money to buy another C\u00e9zanne painting. Whit Clay, a spokesman for Black, told the Times <\/em>the transactions \u201cwere completely legal and appropriate,\u201d and \u201cMr. Black paid Epstein for legitimate financial advisory services.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnd Black\u2019s passion for art would come to figure, metaphorically, in at least one of their interactions. In the trove of 20,000 Epstein-related documents that Republicans in the House of Representatives released in November 2025, there were about 75 emails, dating from 2015 to 2016, from Epstein to Black. In May 2016, Epstein wrote, \u201cLeon, you hired me to produce a work of art,\u201d he wrote. \u201c[I]t was not inexpensive[.] [T]he value far exceeds any other piece in your collection\u2014by FAR.\u201d Black, of course, has a nearly priceless art collection. \u201cIt took me 30 years to be able to craft such a work,\u201d Epstein continued, with the rather forced analogy, and then referencing people who worked for Black in his family office, added, \u201cI understand your desire to modify my work, in doing so you have [B]rad telling me, [\u2018]just \n\tI asked Black what he was thinking when this guy he knew for 10 years or so, and who was on the board of his family foundation, and with whom he had discussed the nuances of his children\u2019s personalities, was suddenly being investigated by state and federal prosecutors for pedophilia, essentially, and ended up in jail. \u201cI took it seriously,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t take it that <\/em>seriously. I mean, he was with a 17-year-old prostitute, got prosecuted for it, and got put away for a year. And, you know, according to him, even that person had shown an ID [to him] that she wasn\u2019t underage. My feeling is there are serious things and there are things that are less serious. I didn\u2019t think this was the end of the world, frankly. I mean, I\u2019ve stayed incredibly close with Mike Milken. Mike Milken went to jail for two years. I stayed close with Alfred Taubman. I stayed close with Martha Stewart. We\u2019re still friends. They all went to jail.\u201d Referring back to a list of famous people who interacted with Epstein, he said, \u201cBut most of this list I met after [Epstein\u2019s conviction in June 2008, in a Florida state court]. And he was dealing with big institutions. I mean, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank. It wasn\u2019t like\u2014again he brought Bill Gates up to my office. All of that was after. Not only did I not think it was that serious or heinous, but most of the world didn\u2019t.\u201d Now, though, he conceded the world had changed considerably.<\/p>\n It\u2019s safe to say that prior to <\/strong>Epstein\u2019s arrest on July 6, 2019, few people had any idea that Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein were as extensively involved with each other as they turned out to be. Few people knew the extent of the rich and powerful people who had ties to the convicted pedophile. That would change quickly, of course, and few were affected quite as extensively and devastatingly as Leon Black, the founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management, the scion of ten generations of Orthodox rabbis.<\/p>\n \n\tIn October 2020, at a regularly scheduled Apollo board meeting, Black requested that the board\u2019s conflicts committee hire independent, outside counsel to conduct a \u201cthorough and independent\u201d review of his relationship with Epstein. The committee interviewed three firms, Black told me, and then selected Andrew Levander, at Dechert, to undertake the investigation. He told me he was the only person prominently associated with Jeffrey Epstein who ever asked to be investigated by an independent, outside law firm. None of the others, he said, including Leslie Wexner, Glenn Dubin, Jes Staley, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Sergey Brin, Alan Dershowitz, Larry Summers, Ehud Barak, or Bill Gates, has asked for\u2014and received\u2014an independent scouring of their relationship with Epstein. \u201cI asked for the damn investigation,\u201d Black told me. \u201cI asked for it because I knew I had done nothing wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOn January 22, 2021, came the public release of Andrew Levander\u2019s much anticipated, 22-page report detailing Black\u2019s relationship with Epstein. Black likes to say the Dechert report was \u201ctotally exonerating\u201d of him and his relationship with Epstein. And that\u2019s true, it did clear him of wrongdoing. But whether the report revealed the extent of their relationship or not will probably never be known publicly. (Levander declined to be interviewed about the report.)<\/p>\n \n\tTwo months later, on March 26, MoMA announced that Black would not run for reelection as chairman MoMA board of trustees when his term ended on June 30. Artists such as Nan Goldin and Ai Weiwei criticized MoMA for continuing to have a relationship with Black, after the Dechert report\u2019s revelations. \u201cHow can MoMA stand by Leon Black, a man aligned with Jeffrey Epstein who was responsible for the sex trafficking of teenage girls?\u201d Goldin told Josh Kosman, at the New York Post<\/em>. According to Kosman, a \u201cnumber of MoMA trustees have approached\u201d Black about stepping down as chairman of the board of MoMA when his term ended. \u201cComplicating matters,\u201d he continued, was whether Black would remain on the MoMA board. \u201cRemember, if MoMA kicks out Black,\u201d a source told Kosman, \u201cthey lose a chance at his personal art collection.\u201d (Black remains on the MoMA board but is no longer its chairman.)<\/p>\n \n\tLike nearly everyone else who read the Dechert report, I was incredulous, too. In our conversations, Black said he understood my reaction and was not critical of it. Incredibly, he told me that he had never added up how much he had paid Epstein until he had no choice but to do so as part of Dechert\u2019s investigation. \u201cThe paying [of Epstein] was seriatim. I never had tallied it. And frankly that number that came out was much bigger than I had thought.\u201d He continued, \u201cAnd you can say that\u2019s implausible. . . . How is this possible that this financial genius could throw away these amounts of money? There must be something more there. Yeah, I get it. But there isn\u2019t.\u201d His attorneys at Paul Weiss told me they agreed with Black\u2019s assessment of the Epstein fees. \u201cAgain, we\u2019re his lawyers so you can take it for what it\u2019s worth, which maybe is nothing,\u201d one of them said. \u201cBut I\u2019ve sat with him and discussed it. I actually credit that. I don\u2019t think that he was really focused on the accumulation of payments over the course of those five years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBlack wasn\u2019t finished trying to explain the bizarre juxtaposition of the man whom Businessweek<\/em> labeled \u201cRuthless\u201d in a cover story with a man who could somehow fail to keep track of paying Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile, $158 million for financial advice and only financial advice. It sounded like a justification he had rehearsed, was comfortable with, and thought helped to explain how two diametrically opposed ideas could be true at the same time. \u201cI\u2019m going to tell you something,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause it is complicated, and it does get into people and personalities. So, I\u2019m known to be a ruthless<\/em> negotiator. A penny pincher. Sharp elbows. All of the above. I\u2019m also known to pay $50 million for a Raphael. Twice. Not once. Twice. Two Raphaels, $50 [million] each, this big\u201d\u2014and here, he made a small square with his fingers, indicating an eleven-inch drawing\u2014\u201con paper.\u201d He added, \u201cWhy is it implausible? Is it implausible that I would buy two works on paper for $50 million and be the high bidder in an auction, [when] I\u2019m a value investor and never paid the high bid? That wasn\u2019t the way I did things at Apollo.\u201d That was not even the most he had paid for a single artwork. \u201cThe Scream<\/em> was $130 million,\u201d he said, referring to the Munch pastel masterpiece that hangs above the fireplace in his East Side mansion.\u00a0<\/p>\n From the book <\/em>MONEY TO BURN: The Unvarnished Truth About Leon Black, Apollo, and the Rise of a New Wall Street. Published by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. \u00a9 2026 William D. Cohan.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/leon-black-money-to-burn-excerpt-william-d-cohan-1234797473\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Leon_Black_web_banner.jpg?w=1024″] Leon Black\u2019s main passion is art, a love that can easily be traced back to his mother, the artist, and to his aunt, the art dealer, and to her husband, his uncle, who was also an artist. His collection, housed in both his Park Avenue town house and his weekend home in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2134888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2134888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2134888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2134888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2134888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Sotheby's](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Edvard-Munchs-1895-pastel-on-board-version-of-The-Scream-Modern-Art-Evening-sale-in-New-York-on-May-2-2012.-AFP-PHOTO-CARL-COURT-Photo-credit-should-read-CARL-COURT-AFP-via-Getty-Images.jpg?w=400\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>![\"Visitor](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Pablo-Picassos-1931-sculpture-Bust-of-Woman-during-a-preview-of-the-exhibition-Picasso-Metamorphosis-at-Palazzo-Reale-in-Milan-on-October-17-2018-MIGUEL-MEDINA-AFP-via-Getty-.jpg?w=400\")
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on \u201cclubs and hobbies\u201d and nearly $900 on car washes.<\/p>\n![\"LONDON,](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Raphael-entitled-Head-of-a-Muse-at-Christies-on-December-4-2009-in-London-Photo-by-Peter-Macdiarmid-Getty-Images.jpg?w=400\")
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a bit more red here, let me show you[.\u2019] [Y]ou yourself pick up a brush a[nd] add some strokes. [Y]ou have [J]oslin spray water on it to maintain it. I vigorously complain that [J]oslin i[s] ruining my work \u2026 you describe me as [Z]eus, [I] describe it as [being an] artist and a reaction to his work being ruined. [H]owever [I\u2019]m aware that you own the work and you have the right to paint over it[,] tear it up, put it in the closet in the basement. It[\u2019]s yours.\u201d Epstein wrote Black that his goal was \u201cclear\u201d to \u201cend, not extend,\u201d his financial interactions with Black so that he \u201cwill have a machine that works\u201d and \u201cwill not be complex to oversee.\u201d But, he continued, \u201cto create it, is something else.\u201d He then laid out the cost for Black of his artistry. \u201cUnfortunately for us both, the price for my works has not changed since day one,\u201d he wrote. \u201c[$]40m per year. I\u2019m willing to discount it to [$]35 [million] as I did give you a bad number when asked[,] and should pay an embarrassment fine. I\u2019m also aware, as you made perfectly clear that you have already paid what you consider a great deal of money, for my work. [B]ut again its value exceeds anything else by far in your collection at a cost less than agreed upon.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Head](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Head-of-a-Young-Apostle.-Private-Collection.-Photo-by-Fine-Art-Images-Heritage-Images-Getty-Images.jpg?w=400\")
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