The Leonard A. Lauder Fellowships in the History of Art have been renamed for Distinguished Professor of Art & Art History Emily Braun, Hunter College announced.
The fellowships now are named The Emily Braun Fellowships for the History of Art. The change, which Mr. Lauder envisioned when he funded the fellowships in 2023, took effect on July 1, 2025, in anticipation and in honor of Professor Braun’s retirement in 2026 after 34 years of teaching at Hunter. The fellowships provide full academic tuition annually for selected graduate students enrolled in the art history master’s program — now nine students, including the incoming class.
In more than three decades at Hunter and the Graduate Center, Professor Braun has mentored many undergraduates and graduate students who went on to have careers as university art historians, curators, critics, appraisers, art advisers, art librarians, independent scholars, provenance researchers, and gallery owners and directors. She has curated the world-renowned Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Cubist Art since 1987. Two of her former Hunter students, Luise Mahler and Dr. Ania Jozefacka, are now part of the Leonard Lauder Collection team, while a third, Hunter Professor Lynda Klich, serves as the curator of Mr. Lauder’s Postcard Collection, which he has donated to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
The name change, although long planned, comes at a sad time. Mr. Lauder — a top art collector, visionary philanthropist and humanitarian, and the great benefactor of our Art & Art History Department and the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing — died on June 14 at age 92.
Dr. Nancy Cantor, President of Hunter College, said, “We will be forever grateful for Leonard’s unprecedented generosity, expansive vision, and sage counsel, which have greatly expanded Hunter’s impact in the arts and in healthcare. The fact that he wished to rename his eponymous fellowships for his great friend and collaborator Professor Braun is yet another example of his graciousness, farsightedness, and wisdom.”
The chairman emeritus of The Estée Lauder Companies, Mr. Lauder grew up in New York City and attended the Bronx High School of Science. His late wife, Evelyn Hausner Lauder HCHS ’54, HC ’58, DHL ’10, who he met when she was a Hunter undergraduate, was one of Hunter’s biggest boosters. Mr. Lauder believed strongly in public education and Hunter’s mission as an anchor institution in New York City.
As he wrote: “New York City has meant the world to my family — my children, my parents and grandparents made their lives here — and to me, and Hunter is part of our New York City story.”
At the same time as the fellowships, Mr. Lauder established the Leonard A. Lauder Exhibition and Catalogue Fund. The fund provides support for exhibitions and catalogues published in connection with exhibitions held at the Hunter College Art Galleries as part of Hunter’s Advanced Certificate in Curatorial Studies Program. Mr. Lauder lived in the Hunter neighborhood and would often walk along 68th street and observe the activities at the Leubsdorf Galleries though the large storefront window.
“Leonard Lauder applauded the curatorial certificate program that our department developed,” said Professor Braun. “In 1996 he visited the De Chirico and America exhibition, which I had the privilege of organizing with my Hunter MA students for the Leubsdorf Galleries, and was struck by the quality of what we could do as art historians and as educators. He was thrilled by the show Robert Rauschenberg: Night Shades and Phantoms, organized in 2019 with my Hunter students once again, in collaboration with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. Leonard understood that our program could inspire New York City students to pursue museum careers and make a difference in the public’s experience and knowledge of art and its history.”
In Professor Braun, Mr. Lauder found someone who shared his passion for 20th century modernist art. Her scholarship on Italian modernism, Cubism, and post-World War II European art examines art in relationship to politics and popular culture, and the history of exhibitions and collecting.
Their collaborations were groundbreaking. Professor Braun advised him on his Cubist collection, as well as its gift in 2013 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She co-curated the exhibition that celebrated the gift, Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection, which was recognized by the Association of Art Museum Curators for the best catalogue of the year. In 2022, she co-curated the Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition exhibition for the museum, which established a new way of understanding this foundational movement of modernism.
As a curator and historian, Professor Braun has authored numerous award-winning books and catalogues, including the landmark Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting (for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which received the 2016 Dedalus Foundation Exhibition Catalogue Award).
Professor Braun has also published on modern and contemporary American art, with essays on Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, James Rosenquist and Sol LeWitt – and the Harlem Renaissance. The field of American art was championed by Mr. Lauder, who was a ceaseless supporter of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Professor Braun’s many other exhibitions include The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and their Salons (2005, Jewish Museum, New York; a National Jewish Book Award winner) and Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy (Jewish Museum, New York 1989; Henry Allen Moe Prize).
Even as she has gained plaudits for exhibitions, Professor Braun is equally proud of her role as teacher and mentor. She has supervised some 60 Hunter MA theses, several of which won the collegewide Shuster awards for best thesis. At the Graduate Center, she has overseen nine PhD theses and has four more in progress.
And this is where her role as Mr. Lauder’s curator enriched her classroom teaching. He encouraged her to offer graduate courses around his collection, and he welcomed our students into his home to study individual works of art.
“Leonard Lauder valued Hunter, he valued our students, and he valued how our art history program bridged the museum and the academy,” said Professor Braun. “For him, the study of art and material culture was a means of instilling civic pride, preserving our culture heritage, and making art available and interesting to all — at the highest of levels. I am deeply grateful to him for this honor.”
Cynthia Hahn, Distinguished Professor of Art & Art History, Hunter College, and the CUNY Graduate Center, said, “Mimi Braun dedicated her academic life to CUNY, and her heart to Hunter. After an early appointment to the Art Department (now the Art & Art History department), Mimi quickly won tenure and promotion, ascending from full to distinguished professor, a CUNY-wide recognition of her formidable academic achievements. However, it is her work with Hunter students that shows her extraordinary commitment. She models excellent and meticulous scholarship and set the standard for both students and faculty for what is now recognized as one of the best art history departments in the country. We will miss her presence, her guidance, and her hard work that always directed us to move us forward. We can only hope that she visits often.”
