Leon Black Plans to Turn Woolworth Mansion Into His Own Museum, Book Reveals
The disgraced financier, whose ties to Jeffrey Epstein are being investigated in Congress, told author William D. Cohan that he wants to turn the Manhattan property into “his version of the Neue Galerie.”
Billionaire art collector and MoMA board member Leon Black, whose connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are the subject of ongoing investigation, plans to convert an iconic Manhattan property into a foundation to display his estimated $5 billion art collection, a new book reveals.
In Money to Burn: Leon Black, Apollo and the Remaking of Wall Street (2026), veteran business journalist William D. Cohan writes that Black said he plans to turn the Woolworth Mansion on East 80th Street “into his version of the Neue Galerie.” The disgraced financier purchased the French Gothic estate last November for $38 million, Curbed reported.
Cohan’s new book lands amid deepening turmoil for Black. This week, the US House of Representatives voted to hold Black in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas in an Epstein investigation. In 2021, news broke that Black paid Epstein $158 million from 2012 to 2017 for financial advice, after Epstein's first accusation of sex-trafficking minors in 2005 and conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008.
Shortly after resigning from Apollo Global Management, Black stepped down as chairman of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2021, after Hyperallergic published an open letter signed by over 150 artists calling for his removal. He remains a trustee on the institution's board, despite ongoing campaigns for the museum to completely sever ties with him.
Epstein helped Black leverage his art collection, which includes a pastel version of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" (1893) and paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Picasso, as a multifunctional asset and lucrative bank collateral, as revealed in documents reviewed by Forbes.
Epstein also aided Black and Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics powerhouse and co-founder of the Neue Galerie, to expand their respective art collections. He created an LLC in 2014 that allowed the two financiers to split ownership of artist Kurt Schwitters's $25 million assemblage, "Ja - Was? - Bild" (1920), according to a Bloomberg report.
Multiple sexual assault allegations have been brought forth against Black in recent years, none of which have resulted in a conviction. In 2021, former model Guzel Ganieva accused Black of sexual abuse and harassment, and defamation, though a New York judge dismissed the suit in 2025 due to Ganieva accepting a $9 million non-disclosure agreement payment from the billionaire. The following year, Cheri Pierson accused the Wall Street titan of a "brutal" sexual attack at Epstein's Upper East Side mansion in 2002. She discontinued her suit two years later. Black denied Ganieva and Pierson's allegations.
Black received his third sexual assault accusation in 2023, alleging that he raped a 16-year-old girl with developmental disabilities at Epstein’s Manhattan residence in 2002. A tranche of the Epstein Files released by the Department of Justice earlier this year included scanned pages of an apparent diary with first-person accounts of alleged abuse. This April, a federal judge imposed sanctions on the plaintiff for falsifying sonogram images in her journal and on her lawyers for lying to the court and to Black's attorneys. However, the judge decided not to grant “case-terminating sanctions,” concluding that “lesser sanctions can address the misconduct.”
In February, British artist Tai Shani withdrew a forthcoming monograph with Phaidon, a publisher owned by Black, citing "numerous horrific allegations" in the newly released Epstein documents.
If turned into an art gallery, the Woolworth House would mark Black's second renovation project of a historic townhouse in New York City. In 2014, he purchased the former home of the Knoedler & Company art gallery for $50 million, after the institution permanently shuttered in 2011 amid a fake artwork scandal. According to Cohan, the Knoedler building currently houses some works in Black's art collection.
Built in 1901 for the family of the five-and-dime state pioneer, Frank Winfield Woolworth, the Woolworth Mansion remains the largest private residence in Manhattan. The limestone townhouse spent 14 years on the market, with Black buying it for half of the initial $90 million asking price.
Following in the footsteps of other billionaires, Black has his sights set on turning Woolworth into a foundation — for “tax purposes,” as Cohan notes in a parenthetical in his book.
Foundations have long been a financial instrument among the wealthy. A 2023 ProPublica investigation found that some of these individuals claimed millions of dollars in tax deductions while “offering little or no public access.”
"Who knows how he's going to potentially populate the Woolworth Mansion?" Cohan told Hyperallergic. "But I think he is definitely of the view that people should see his artworks."
