The New Criterion
The founding of The New Criterion is a case study in how foundation philanthropy has changed. Two art critics, Hilton Kramer and Samuel Lipman, wanted to start a conservative journal Read more…
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Mystic Seaport Museum
Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, Connecticut, had been an active seaport since the 1600s—filled with ships either being built or sailing in and out on merchant business. Between the late-eighteenth and Read more…
Museum of Modern Art
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of John Rockefeller Jr., fell in love with Modern art quite early. Though her husband had entirely different tastes, and indeed actively disliked most Modern art, Read more…
Severance Hall
The Cleveland Orchestra, today one of the top symphonies in America, had humble beginnings. It was founded in 1918 by a group of local citizens led by Adella Prentiss Hughes, Read more…
Folger Shakespeare Library
In 1879, Henry Folger was a senior at Amherst College, which he attended with financial aid from generous private individuals. That year he attended a lecture on Shakespeare given by Read more…
Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago
One of the favorite places that Chicago philanthropist Julius Rosenwald ever visited with his family was the Deutsches Museum in Munich—which (then as now) was the world’s foremost exhibit of Read more…
The Walters Art Museum
William Walters and later his son Henry made a great deal of money in railroads, and beginning in the 1860s poured much of it into collecting art in Europe. In Read more…
Creating a Cultural Village
Members of the Clark family, heirs to much of the Singer Sewing Company fortune, have resided in the bucolic village of Cooperstown, New York, since the mid-1800s. When the Depression Read more…
The Guggenheim
Solomon Guggenheim was born into a wealthy mining family, and expanded his fortune through his own mining ventures. He turned primarily to philanthropy after the First World War. The Solomon Read more…
National Gallery of Art
Under the influence of his friend Henry Frick, Pittsburgh banker Andrew Mellon had begun collecting art in the 1910s. During years of great instability in Europe, he acquired a remarkable Read more…
The Cloisters Museum and Gardens
One of the most unusual museums in New York City, or anywhere in America, is The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art located in far northern Manhattan. Read more…
The Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera had been founded in 1883 by a group of wealthy New York City businessmen who wanted to run their own theater. From its inception it attracted top Read more…
Hidden Gems: Community Museums
Some of America’s best art and history isn’t found in big cities or major institutions. It’s located in places where formative events took place. Many of these community museums were Read more…
Rare Books Made Accessible by Berg and Rosenwald
In the 1940s, donors established two major collections of rare books at America’s most significant libraries. In 1940, Albert Berg, a New York surgeon from a Hungarian immigrant family, donated Read more…
Taming Western Art
Thomas Gilcrease, whose parents had Creek ancestry and whose first wife was Osage, grew up on Indian lands within present-day Oklahoma. Oil was eventually discovered under 160 acres he had Read more…
Old Sturbridge Village
Albert Wells was an executive in the thriving American Optical Company of Southbridge, Massachusetts, built up by his father. In 1926, A. B. (as he was called) went antique hunting Read more…
New York City Ballet
Until the 1930s, American ballet dancers had to rely on touring foreigners for teaching. Heir, cultural impresario, and donor Lincoln Kirstein, who came from a wealthy family of clothing retailers, Read more…
Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke
Walter Paepcke made his fortune as a corporate executive in Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century before launching a career in philanthropy. The town of Aspen, Colorado, Read more…
Corning Museum of Glass
A classic example of a corporation doing philanthropy that only it could carry out, the Corning Museum of Glass was very unlike most corporate museums. It was opened in 1951 Read more…
Cultural Kingmaker at the Ford Foundation
Sometimes the most significant successes of even the biggest foundations come down to one person. By the 1960s, the Ford Foundation was the largest entity making grants to the arts Read more…