Robert Lehman Foundation Inc.

The Robert Lehman Foundation (New York, NY; EIN 13-6094018) is a visual-arts-only private foundation with roughly $40.1M in assets, built around the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It funds museums, arts organizations, educational institutions, and cultural organizations working in four clearly defined buckets: museum exhibitions, art education for underserved communities, the Edwin L. Weisl Jr. Lectureships in Art History at colleges, and occasional capital projects. Unlike many closed family foundations, Lehman runs an open, twice-a-year application cycle with published deadlines (April 1 and September 15) and an online submission form, so any serious visual-arts organization can apply on the merits. The strategic move is to frame a project that either complements the Lehman Collection's strengths (Early Renaissance through Impressionist) or advances scholarly/curatorial content tied to classical or contemporary art with meaningful access outcomes.

Recent 990s show roughly 58 grants per year, with a median check of $10,000, an average of $25,614, a minimum of $56, and a maximum of $795,000. This is a 'many small, few large' pattern: the foundation spreads small education and lectureship support ($5K-$25K) broadly while concentrating six-figure awards on flagship museum exhibitions and capital projects. Geographic focus is primarily New York and Connecticut, but exhibition grants travel nationally (Denver Art Museum, Buffalo AKG, Guggenheim, MoMA, American Folk Art Museum are all recent grantees). Sector is 100% visual arts — no cross-disciplinary funding, no performing arts, no non-arts causes. Board meets in May and October; decisions follow within roughly 30 days of each meeting.

Among visual-arts private foundations in the $30-50M asset band, Lehman is distinctive for its open application cycle and national grantee reach:

Lehman's published guidelines, named program (Weisl Lectureships), and twice-yearly review cycle are more typical of a mid-size operating foundation than a classic family foundation — it behaves like a discipline-specific program officer-led funder.

The foundation continues active funding across its four buckets with recent high-profile exhibition grants visible on its homepage: Jordan Casteel: Returning the Gaze (Denver Art Museum), Stanley Whitney's How High the Moon (Buffalo AKG, 2024), Sarah Sze: Timelapse (Guggenheim), Georgia O'Keeffe: To See Takes Time (MoMA, 2023), and Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North (American Folk Art Museum, 2023). The pattern in 2023-2025 shows a clear tilt toward scholarship on underrepresented American and Black artists alongside the foundation's traditional Old Masters/Impressionist core. No reported leadership changes. Contact remains info@robertlehmanfoundation.org, 212-661-1967. Application deadlines for 2026 remain April 1 and September 15.

Lehman rewards precision and scholarship. A strong proposal will: (1) explicitly connect the project to the foundation's mission of 'knowledge, appreciation, and enhancement of the visual arts' and, where possible, to the Lehman Collection's strengths (Early Renaissance through Impressionist) — this does not mean the project must be Old Masters, but articulating the scholarly bridge to classical art helps; (2) for exhibitions, lead with the curatorial argument and catalogue scholarship, not the attendance numbers — Lehman is a scholarly funder; (3) for art education asks, document that the target community is genuinely underserved with data on access gaps, not generic DEI language; (4) for lectureships, apply via the Edwin L. Weisl Jr. program structure at a college with a sitting art history course; (5) right-size the ask — request $10K-$25K for education and lectureships, $50K-$250K for significant exhibitions, and reserve six-figure capital asks for institutions with a prior Lehman relationship. Submit a clean project budget and organizational budget, and include catalogue/scholarly deliverables where applicable.