$5 Million Gift to Endow Director’s Position at Brooklyn Museum
(via The New York Times)
The Brooklyn Museum has received a $5 million gift from the Leon Levy Foundation to endow the position of director, the museum is expected to announce on Tuesday. The gift is the largest the museum has received from a donor who was not a member of its board of trustees. Arnold L. Lehman, the director of the museum since 1997, will become, formally, the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum.
Shelby White, for whom the position is partly named, is a founding trustee of the Leon Levy Foundation, which was established in 2004 from the estate of Mr. Levy, an investor and philanthropist, with the goal of supporting “scholarship at the highest level.” Its other recent programs include fellowships in neuroscience and support from digital archiving and cataloging programs that include the New York Philharmonic’s digital archives and a digital version of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“I grew up in Brooklyn,” Ms. White said in a statement, “and I remember taking class trips to the museum to look at the Egyptian collection. I didn’t realize, until much later, that it was one of the greatest museums in the world.”
