BROOKLYN, NY.- This fall, the Brooklyn Museum opened Cézanne to Modigliani: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection. The exhibition, which follows LACMA’s presentation on view in early 2025, showcases more than fifty modern European works from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, drawn from the renowned collection of Henry and Rose Pearlman. Featuring paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, Cézanne to Modigliani celebrates the transformative gift of this stellar collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA.

The Pearlman Foundation’s decision to entrust the stewardship of these treasures to be shared across three institutions is the ultimate manifestation of their family’s generosity and commitment to sharing their prized artworks with a wide public. This will be the Brooklyn Museum’s sixth exhibition of works drawn from the collection, honoring the Museum’s longtime relationship with the Pearlmans. The gift of twenty-nine of the Pearlman artworks to Brooklyn marks one of the most significant gifts of European art in the Museum’s history.

“The Pearlman Collection is an exquisite selection of modernist works, and we are thrilled to offer our visitors in Brooklyn a final opportunity to see them all together,” says Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art. “We are particularly excited to spotlight the works that are entering our collection and commemorate a truly momentous gift for our institution.”

The artworks on view exemplify the radical new styles, subjects, and art world economies that began to disrupt centuries of academic traditions and hierarchies in the nineteenth century. It features artists from a range of backgrounds—including several Eastern European immigrants—who explore the complexities of representation, abstraction, materiality, and illusion. Brooklyn’s presentation will foreground narratives of encounter and connection: between Pearlman and the artists he collected (including fascinating provenance and conservation stories); between artists and their subjects; and among the artists themselves.





The exhibition opens with the painting that inspired Pearlman’s passion for modern European art and would guide the rest of his approach to collecting: Chaïm Soutine’s View of Céret (1921–22), which is among Brooklyn’s gifts. Another Brooklyn gift, a notable early canvas by Toulouse-Lautrec that parodies a classicizing Salon painting, emphasizes the tensions between tradition and innovation—in subject and form—that characterize all the artworks Pearlman collected.

The show also features the first two Amedeo Modigliani paintings to enter the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, portraits of Jean Cocteau (1916) and Léon Indenbaum (1915), as well as a rare limestone bust by the artist. Other works entering the Brooklyn Museum collection that will be on view include paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, and Camille Pissarro.

The Pearlmans collected Paul Cézanne in depth, including several major landscapes, figural works, and a cache of watercolors by the artist. Additional artworks by Édouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, and Vincent Van Gogh further reveal the Pearlman collection’s status as an elite grouping of modern European masterworks.

In addition to the artworks, Cézanne to Modigliani will have a special focus on the Pearlmans’ personal story, including Henry’s collecting vision and relationships with artists like Oskar Kokoschka and Jacques Lipchitz, each of whom created a portrait of him. Through photographs, letters, and archival documents, Brooklyn’s presentation will also spotlight the Pearlmans’ lasting connection with the borough of Brooklyn and its museum.

Henry, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was raised in Park Slope and with only a high school education became a successful businessman during World War II, when he founded the Eastern Cold Storage Insulation Company. Rose immigrated to the United States from Minsk, Belarus, at age four, grew up in Brooklyn, and was a savvy practical advisor to Henry as he built the collection. Starting in the 1950s, the Pearlmans made many long-term loans to the Brooklyn Museum, and their collection was the focus of six special exhibitions here, the last one of which took place in 1986.