• The Department of Justice released new Epstein files, exposing fresh ties to collectors and museum leaders.
• Some named in the documents have resigned from high-profile roles.
• Epstein’s former friends and professional contacts maintain they were unaware of his wrongdoing. 

The U.S. Department of Justice’s release of roughly 3 million additional Epstein files is triggering a new wave of fallout, as fresh details about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to prominent figures in politics, finance, and the art world prompt investigations and resignations.

The newly unsealed documents help map Epstein’s extensive network of powerful associates and connections. While inclusion in the files is not proof of wrongdoing, the revelations have intensified scrutiny of individuals who maintained contact with him, especially after his 2008 conviction, for which he served 13 months in jail. In several cases, that pressure has led to high-profile departures—including among collectors, museum leaders, and other arts figures now facing renewed public and institutional accountability.

Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in July 2019, and more than 1,200 women have come forward with accusations of rape, abuse, and sex trafficking. He died by apparent suicide in his jail cell on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s right hand and former girlfriend, is now serving a 20-year U.S. sentence for child sex trafficking.

After the DOJ unsealed additional documents in early 2026, repercussions for those involved with him have accelerated. In the U.K., Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother to King Charles, has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, after the king stripped the former prince of his title in late 2025 due to his connections to Epstein.

Elsewhere in Europe and the Middle East, senior officials and corporate executives have stepped down or come under investigation following revelations in the latest tranche. In the U.S., Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel for President Barack Obama and the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs, resigned from the firm, while Brad Karp, a lawyer for Apollo Global Management, quit the law firm Paul Weiss.

The art world, long intertwined with global wealth and power, has not been immune. Figures that are named include collector John Phelan, New York Academy of Art board chair Eileen Guggenheim, and artists Andres Serrano and Jeff Koons.

Below is a closer look at the arts figures who have stepped down recently and over the years following revelations about their ties to Epstein.

This list will be updated as necessary.

February 2026

February 17: Collector Thomas Pritzker Steps Down as Hyatt Hotel Chain Chair 

Thomas Pritzker at the Park Hyatt New York premiere in 2014. Photo: Owen Hoffmann. © Patrick McMullan.

Thomas Pritzker, former board chair of the Art Institute of Chicago, resigned as executive chairman of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation on February 17 and said he will not seek re-election to Hyatt’s board. In a statement, he said had “exercised terrible judgment” in maintaining contact with the sex offender and Epstein accomplice Maxwell.

In a 2016 deposition that authorities unsealed in 2019, Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre identified Pritzker as one of the men she had been forced to have sex with. The newly released files in 2026 included a 2018 email exchange in which Pritzker helped Epstein’s last girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak, plan a trip to Southeast Asia to “find a new girlfriend for Epstein.”

Pritzker, 75, has been featured with his wife, Margot, on the ARTnews top 200 collectors list and their collection was also profiled by Sotheby’s. He was also chair of the Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. He is still executive chairman of the Pritzker Organization.

February 7: Jack Lang Resigns as President of the L’Institut du Monde Arab Due to Epstein Ties

Jack Lang during Paris Fashion Week on January 22, 2026, in Paris, France. Photo by Edward Berthelot/Getty Images.

Jack Lang, the former French culture minister under the late President François Mitterrand, resigned as the president of the L’Institut du Monde Arab (Arab World Institute, or IMA) on February 7 over his ties with Epstein. Lang, 86, who has led the Parisian institution since 2013, denied any wrongdoing, following the latest revelations from the Epstein files, where his name appears 673 times. French police raided the institute headquarters and several other locations as part of investigations into “aggravated tax fraud money laundering” on February 16.

Lang was introduced to Epstein in 2011 by actor Woody Allen and remained in contact with Epstein until his 2019 death. Correspondence also revealed that his daughter, Caroline Lang, co-invested $1.4 million with Epstein in an offshore Virgin Islands company, Prytanee, which was reportedly intended to support investments in art. She was left $5 million in Epstein’s will. Both father and daughter deny profiting from the venture. Caroline also resigned in February 2026 from her role as director of France’s independent film and T.V. producers’ union after just three weeks in the role.

February 3: School of Visual Arts Chair David Ross Quits as Friendship With Epstein Comes to Light

David Ross in 2014. Photo: Patrick McMullan.

Curator David A. Ross, who has helmed major museums—New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston—was among those whose correspondence with Epstein was included in the latest release of files, in early 2026. Ross, 77, stepped down as chair of the MFA art practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York on February 3, saying he was “ashamed that I fell for his lies.”

The DOJ files revealed that Ross wrote an email to Epstein after the latter completed his prison sentence in 2009 claiming “it was an undeserved punishment foisted upon you by jealous creeps.” When, later that year, Epstein proposed staging an exhibition called “Statutory” that would feature photos of girls and boys ages 14–25, “where they look nothing like their true ages,” Ross called the idea “incredible” and asked Epstein if he was familiar with “that total porno commercial kiddie picture of Brooke Shcilds [sic] that Richard Prince appropriated for an exhibition in the early 1980’s.” In 2015, Ross assured Epstein he was “still proud to call you a friend.”

January 2026

January 28: Burning Man Members Call for Kimball Musk’s Resignation Over Emails to Epstein

Kimbal Musk in 2022. Photo: Chris Saucedo/ Getty Images for SXSW.

Kimbal Musk, the younger brother of Elon Musk, appeared in the latest tranche of Epstein files more than 100 times, including thanking Epstein for “connecting” him to a woman in 2012. Members of the Burning Man community, the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert that includes large-scale art installations, launched a petition calling for his removal from the board of Burning Man Project. The letter took objection to Musk’s “documented pattern of association with a convicted sex offender” and stressed the importance of Burning Man’s “robust culture of consent.”

Musk, 53, had joined the board in 2021, after a donation from brother Elon. He resigned from the board at the completion of his term, a week before the latest files’ release, according to a report in the San Francisco Standard.

March 2021

March 22: Billionaire Leon Black Steps Down as MoMA Board Chair After Epstein Inquiry

Leon Black in 2015. Photo: Paul Bruinooge. © Patrick McMullan.

In late 2020, Leon Black’s company, Apollo Global Management, hired the law firm Dechert to investigate his dealings with Epstein. When it was revealed in January 2021 that Black had paid Epstein $158 million for art and tax services, Black agreed to step down as the private equity firm’s chief executive by the summer. Just two months later, in March, Black announced that he would exit the firm immediately; and additionally he would not seek re-election as chairman of the board of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. But he stayed on as a board member—a position he retains in 2026.

Bloomberg reported in February 2026 that the recent release of files paints a more complex picture. When Black’s former mistress, Guzel Ganieva, demanded $100 million following their separation, it was Epstein who came to the rescue with advice and by arranging surveillance of a meeting between the former lovers.

Epstein also thwarted an IRS audit into Black’s cash gifts totaling over $1.7 million in 2013 and 2015 to an unnamed Eastern European woman who had previously had a relationship with Epstein after moving to New York in 2009. The files also detail a $1.8 million commission the woman’s art brokerage company received in connection to Black’s sale of the Paul Klee painting Was fehlt ihm?—a hefty 23 percent of the $7.8 million sale price.

Black, now 74, also paid the U.S. Virgin Islands $62.5 million in a 2023 settlement related to Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

March 18: Collector Les Wexner Resigns from L Brands Board 

Les Wexner in 2016. Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Fragrance Foundation.

Billionaire retail magnate Leslie “Les” Wexner—an ARTnews Top 200 collector alongside his wife, Abigail, and a major benefactor of Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts, which is named after his father, Harry L. Wexner—has again come under scrutiny following the DOJ’s release of unredacted Epstein files in 2026.

Wexner, 88, was the first of Epstein’s financial clients to be publicly identified. In 2019, artist Maria Farmer alleged that Epstein raped her at Wexner’s Ohio estate in 1996 while she was participating in an artist residency there. Amid pressure from investors, Wexner stepped down as CEO and chairman of L Brands—the company he founded in 1963, which included Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body Works the company he founded—in May 2020 and resigned from its board in March 2021.

Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said that FBI materials in the unredacted files released in February 2026  identified Wexner as an unindicted Epstein co-conspirator. Wexner participated in a closed-door congressional deposition on February 18, where has described himself as “naive, foolish, and gullible” for trusting the late sex offender. He denied any wrongdoing.

January 2020

January 24: Hedge Fund Veteran and MoMA Board Member Glenn Dubin Retires 

Glenn Dubin and Eva Andersson-Dubin at the Museum of Modern Art in 2015. Photo by Paul Bruinooge, ©Patrick McMullan.

In January 2020, Glenn Dubin announced his retirement from managing hedge funds after a 40-year career, stepping down from Engineers Gate LP, the company he had founded in 2014, to focus on private investments. He claimed his documented involvement with Epstein had not influenced the decision. The billionaire still sits on MoMA’s board, despite a 2019 public ad campaign against him and Black from the Guerrilla Girls, the anonymous feminist art collective.

Dubin, 68, was instrumental in helping Epstein invest and grow his money, making introductions in the world of finance. In a 2016 deposition unsealed in August 2019, Giuffre alleged that Dubin was the “first” powerful person Maxwell forced her to have sex with.

Dubin’s family also has multiple ties to Epstein. His wife, physician Eva Andersson-Dubin, a former model who was Miss Sweden in 1980, dated Epstein for 11 years. The couple made Epstein, who reportedly introduced them, the godfather of their three children, according to Vanity Fair, and he was particularly close with daughter Celina Dubin.