Just hours after Congress released Jeffrey Epstein’s so-called “birthday book,” which included a note from Leon Black, MoMA welcomed the financier and art collector — along with another Epstein associate — to a swank bash.
On Monday Congress released the book, which most famously includes a drawing that appears to have been signed by Donald Trump, showing for the first time a poem apparently penned by Black to honor Epstein’s 50th birthday. (Trump denies that he signed the book).
The verse in the 2003 tribute includes lines like “A liver, a lover, a Jeff, a Jeffrey/Let’s all give a cheer for today he’s 50” and “Wet dream and cauchemar, an architecht’s wild spree/Moscow, Paris, Santa Fe, Alhambar East jamboree.”
So art insiders were wide-eyed to see Black, as well as fellow Epstein pal Glenn Dubin, stride into a private party, apparently hosted by the institution itself, at the Midtown museum a few hours later.
Black — who owns, among other important pieces, a version of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” — stepped down as chairman of the museum in 2021 after protest from artists and workers over his connections to Epstein.
On Tuesday, a rep for Black told us, “Mr. Black was proud to be at the dinner as a longtime supporter of the arts and member of the MoMA board.”
Black has said that he had a “limited relationship” with the late pedophile and that he regrets their association. A review carried by a legal firm found that, while Black paid him millions for financial services, the former Apollo Global Management head didn’t know about his sexual misconduct.
Also on the scene was Dubin, who was also a longtime pal of Epstein’s. Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre claimed that Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell once instructed her to sleep with Dubin.
A rep for Dubin strongly denied the allegation to the Post in 2024 after Giuffre testified about the alleged tryst, calling her statements “unsubstantiated.”
Both Black and Dubin have galleries in MoMA named after them.
In 2019, an activist group posted an ad opposite the museum reading: “MoMA should kick Leon Black & Glenn Dubin off its Board immediately, drape the Black & Durbin [sic] Galleries in black, & put up wall labels explaining why.”
MoMA and Dubin didn’t get back to us.
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