Following the announcement of a $100 million donation for the New York Public Library, The Whitney has just announced their own sugar daddy: Leonard A. Lauder.
Lauder is the chairman of Estée Lauder cosmetics, and through his American Contemporary Art Foundation he'll be donating $131 million (the largest donation the museum has received in 77 years, and one of the largest ever to a New York museum’s endowment). Endowment donations are notoriously difficult to solicit, as they do not yield a namesake building (as Schwarzman's NYPL donation did). One string is attached to the gift, however -- the museum cannot sell its Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue (pictured)...at least for an unspecified extended period of time. It has been widely speculated they would be selling it in order to open a satellite museum downtown.
Will the Whitney be able to finally move ahead with their downtown project while holding on to their Madison Avenue building? The museum has been eyeing locations in the Meatpacking District (on Washington and West Streets) but nothing has materialized just yet. Lauder's donation is expected to encourage other trustees to donate, perhaps giving the museum the financial support it needs. Their $195 million endowment is still pocket change, however, especially in comparison to MoMA's, which weighs in at a whopping $850 million! Yet it's still more than The Guggenheim's, which is only around $118 million, a figure that has fluctuated a lot since Thomas Krens has been in charge, and will likely go up once he's officially gone.
Photo via ekainj's flickr.
