David-Weill began to collect from an early age. His acquisitions included paintings, drawings, miniatures, sculptures, furniture, silverware, and other items. He became president of the
Réunion des Musées Nationaux and vice president of the
Société des amis du Louvre. In late 1940, David-Weill sent twenty-six cases of paintings and antiquities to Lisbon for shipment on the
SS Excalibur to New York, where they were to be sold by the Wildensteins, as property of Anglo-Continental Art, Inc. However U.S. Treasury officials, concerned about their French origins in wartime, "descended on the elegant premises of Wildenstein, New York". The assets of Anglo-Continental were frozen by US officials and proceeds placed in a blocked account. Many of looted paintings, such as Henri Fantin-Latour's
Self-Portrait, were recovered by the Monuments Men and returned to France which restituted them to David-Weill. Not all artworks were recovered. Missing paintings were published in the
Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945, Groupe français du conseil de controle, 1947. In later life he donated more than 2000 items to museums and galleries, including the
Guimet Museum, the
Louvre, and universities in New York, Hamburg, Leiden, Honolulu, and Stockholm. He donated to the libraries of the
Musée de l'Homme and the
Institut national d'histoire de l'art, to which he gave the manuscript and journal of
Eugène Delacroix. He also gave his Chinese-bronze collection to the
Musée Guimet and his
cloisonné objects to the
Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD). ==Death==