J. Tomilson Hill, the vice chairman of the Blackstone Group, is known on Wall Street as a veteran deal maker.
But he has recently been displaying his prowess in a different field: art.
Mr. Hill, known as Tom, led a tour of eighth-grade students last week at the Frick Collection in Manhattan, including an exhibit of bronze statuettes that are on loan to the museum from Mr. Hill and his wife, Janine, according to a post on Blackstone’s blog on Wednesday.
Mr. Hill, the blog post showed, knows a thing or two about the bronzes, which are from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. He and a curator fielded questions from the middle schoolers.
“Among other discussion topics, Hill explained how curatorial decisions helped to place the bronzes in conversation with each other and with the paintings hanging throughout the museum,” the Blackstone
blog post said. “Hill also answered questions about the material process of casting the bronzes and the references to classical mythology present in even minor details on each piece.”
Mr. Hill is a major presence in the art world, having donated to institutions like the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, N.C. The financier was in attendance on Tuesday evening at a Christie’s auction that generated nearly $745 million worth of sales.
With his quintessentially Wall Street look, including slicked-back hair and elegant suits, Mr. Hill has also captured the imagination of writers. In their book “Barbarians at the Gate,” Bryan Burrough and John Helyar said Mr. Hill appeared to enemies as “an oiled-back Gordon Gekko haircut atop 5 feet, 10 inches of icy Protestant reserve.”
James B. Stewart, in his book “Den of Thieves,” wrote that Mr. Hill “dressed meticulously” and “slicked his hair straight back from his scalp.”
“While he struck some as cold, even arrogant,” Mr. Stewart wrote, “he impressed his clients as experienced, efficient and professional.”
His mien at the Frick, however, was professorial.
“The students displayed an interest and sensitivity beyond their years,” Mr. Hill said in a statement included in the blog post. “I look forward to exploring additional opportunities to foster an early engagement with the arts.”