Sir Arthur Gilbert; British Art Benefactor, Real Estate Developer

British art benefactor Sir Arthur Gilbert, who withdrew one of the world’s finest private collections of decorative silver and gold from its longtime home at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art four years ago and gave it to England, died at his Beverly Hills home Sunday of a heart attack. He was 88 and had struggled with cancer and diabetes.

Gilbert, who had made Los Angeles his home for more than 50 years, was a trustee of the museum in 1996 when he accused it of reneging on a written agreement in refusing to provide more space for his collection’s expansion.

He announced that he would instead donate the collection to England. One of the most lavish gifts ever made to that nation, it included some 800 gold and silver objects and an unusual array of micro-mosaics. The collection recently was estimated to be worth about $200 million.

“If you were a collector who had spent 30 years of your life and most of your money doing it, you’d think when you give it to somebody, they’d appreciate it,” Gilbert told The Times in 1996, after taking out a half-page ad in the newspaper to explain his position. “I must say, the public in Los Angeles really appreciated it--unfortunately, our museum . . . is not partial to decorative arts.”

The Gilbert Collection opened last year at London’s Somerset House, a magnificent 18th century palace considered one of the best examples of Classical architecture in Britain. It had been largely closed to the public until last year, when its refurbishment was completed.

The Somerset devoted 25,000 square feet to Gilbert’s collection and acceded to the benefactor’s demand that every item be on display all the time. The display includes a reproduction of Gilbert’s Beverly Hills study, replete with a life-size waxwork of the collector attired in tennis clothes and holding a large white telephone, that some critics described as bizarre.

John McEwen, writing in the London Sunday Telegraph, said the Gilbert holdings ranged from “kitsch beyond the dreams of Liberace” to “many items of peerless refinement,” such as a neoclassical clock once owned by Pope Pius V and Napoleon.

More than 200,000 people have visited the collection since it opened in London. Gilbert later proclaimed himself very happy with the move, calling the collection Britain’s “heritage regained” because many of the pieces originally belonged to British aristocrats. In gratitude, Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 1999.

The Gilbert collection exemplified European extravagance of the late 15th to early 19th centuries. It includes scores of gold boxes embellished with precious stones, mosaic and enamel that were used to hold snuff or were purely decorative and used as diplomatic gifts. LACMA said the collection of boxes, which included several owned by King Frederick the Great of Prussia, was rivaled only by one held by the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. In a 1991 review, William Wilson, then Times art critic, called the Gilbert collection “the diamond in the diadem.”

Other important holdings included an Anatolian ewer or pitcher raised from a single sheet of gold that was crafted between 2500 and 2000 BC, a silver-gilt ewer and basin made in 1789-90 by French master Henry Auguste and an 1880s Viennese dish inset with 13 enameled scenes from classical mythology. Many of the Gilbert items were works of renowned craftsmen Paul Storr and Paul de Lamerie.

Gilbert continually added to his collection. On the first anniversary of the opening at Somerset House, he gave the museum a rare pure-gold Torah crown, one of two known to exist in the world. Valued at $1 million, it is studded with rubies, emeralds, rose diamonds and gem-encrusted flowers set on coiled springs so that the flowers would quiver as the Torah it adorned was passed around the synagogue.

Became Rich Selling Apparel, Real Estate

Born Arthur Bernstein in 1913, Gilbert was descended from Polish Jews who ran a London furrier business. By age 36 he had made a fortune producing and marketing evening gowns designed by his wife, Rosalinde Gilbert, whose last name he took for business reasons. He moved to Los Angeles in 1949 with plans to retire. He instead made a second fortune, in real-estate development.

Needing decorations for his new home in Los Angeles, he began to collect objets d’art. When a friend told him he needed some silver to dress up the living room, he purchased “a schmaltzy cabinet by 18th century silversmith Paul de Lamerie.” It was around this time that he also bought his first mini-mosaic. By 1975, he owned enough mosaics to fill a gallery at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Gilberts eventually were ranked among the top 100 American collectors by Arts & Antiques magazine. Their Beverly Hills home glittered with extravagant objets, labeled as if in a museum.

He was so fond of his collection that he would visit it several times a week at LACMA and guide visitors around with a magnifying glass.

“Whether you collect snuff boxes or matchboxes, don’t buy because it’s going up in value,” he once told an interviewer, “but because you like it or it will enhance your life--then give it all away.”

LACMA organized several special exhibitions of the Gilbert holdings from 1973 to 1999. Much of the collection was on permanent display in the museum’s Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Galleries.

Gilbert became a member of LACMA’s board of trustees in 1977. He funded an annual classical music concert series at the museum in memory of his wife, who died in 1995.

In 1998 he married his second wife, Marjorie, who survives him along with a son, Colin; a daughter, Wendy Lee Gallagher; and a stepdaughter, Suzanne Waring.