Art Collector Steven Maksin Shares Masterpieces With the World
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CEOWORLD magazine — by Katherina Davis, Ph.D., 25 April 2026
CEOWORLD magazine profiles Steven Maksin as a collector whose mission is not just to acquire historically significant works but to share them with the public — through gifts and long-term loans to leading museums across America and Europe.
Katherina Davis's piece moves between Maksin's two great collecting interests: antique decorated firearms — the gold-inlaid Winchester rifles on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the 17th-century French wheellock arquebus, once shown at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, now at the Art Institute of Chicago — and Italian Old Master paintings, with works by Titian, Raphael and Pittoni currently exhibited at the Pinacoteca Manfrediniana in Venice, the Royal Palace of Naples, the Accademia Albertina of Turin, the Palazzo Mocenigo of Venice, and the Espace Lympia in Nice.
The article highlights Maksin's 2021 partnership with Ronald S. Lauder and Alejandro Santo Domingo to acquire and donate to the Met the Gustave Young-engraved, gold-inlaid Smith & Wesson Model 1½ Second Issue Factory Exhibition Revolver — described by Met curator John Byck as one of the finest Smith & Wessons to come to market in twenty years.
CEOWORLD magazine is an online business publication that profiles executives, entrepreneurs and high-net-worth philanthropists for an international audience; its coverage of cultural philanthropy ranks alongside its core business and finance reporting. The Maksin profile is one of a connected family of features that appeared in the spring of 2026 across CEO Today, Digital Journal, BBN Times and the Chicago Tribune's sponsor-content channel, each treating a different facet of his collecting and museum-gift activity.
The institutional partners named in the article span the major museums of two continents. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Maksin's Crespo Winchester Model 1866 (accession 904559) and Foot Guard Winchester Model 1873 (accession 904560) are on long-term loan in the Arms and Armor galleries; at the Art Institute of Chicago, a Louis XIII French wheellock arquebus has been on loan since 2024. In Italy and France the picture is wider: works by Titian at the Pinacoteca Manfrediniana of the Seminario Patriarcale in Venice; three Pittoni mythological canvases shown in 2025 at the Palazzo Reale di Napoli and the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice; further Pittoni at the Accademia Albertina of Turin; and a Salvador Dalí presence at the Espace Lympia in Nice.
The 2021 gift of the Smith & Wesson Model 1½ Second Issue factory-exhibition revolver — engraved by the Hartford-based Gustave Young (1827-1895), the German-born master engraver who worked for Samuel Colt and Smith & Wesson — was made jointly with Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir and founder of the Neue Galerie in New York, and Alejandro Santo Domingo, the Colombian-American philanthropist and Met trustee, together with Arthur Ochs Sulzberger of the New York Times family. The pistol, dated 1869 and decorated in steel, silver, gold, mother-of-pearl, brass, wood and velvet, was made by Smith & Wesson as a factory exhibition piece and entered the Met's collection as accession 2021.397a, b. The Met catalogs it in Gallery 372.
Reading across the profile, CEOWORLD frames Maksin's activity as a continuation of the older American collector-donor tradition — Morgan, Mellon, Frick, Lehman, Rockefeller — and as a 21st-century example of how privately-held masterpieces can be returned to public institutions for the benefit of researchers and visitors. The piece notes Maksin's biography — Soviet emigration in 1989, studies at Kingsborough Community College and NYU's Stern School, and his chief-executive role at Moonbeam Capital — and reads his collecting work as the second chapter of a businessman's life: from real-estate operator to active cultural philanthropist.
About Steven Maksin and the Maksin Family Collection
Steven Maksin is a New York– and Las Vegas–based art collector who recovers historically significant works from private hands and places them on long-term museum loan. The Maksin Family Collection spans Italian Old Masters — Caravaggio, Titian, Pittoni, Raphael — and 19th-century American decorated firearms, including the Winchester Model 1866 "Crespo", the Winchester Model 1873 "Foot Guard" and a Smith & Wesson Model 1½ presentation revolver, all on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maksin is CEO of Moonbeam Capital and a graduate of NYU Stern.
