When it comes to estate planning, donating to a museum can be one of the most forward-looking choices a collector or philanthropist can make, combining cultural commitment with a degree of strategic self-interest. Whether the gift takes the form of funds or artworks, it can strengthen an institution’s collection and programming and expand access for the communities it serves while also letting donors build lasting legacies and avoid certain tax burdens, sparing their heirs some of the costs and complications of managing an inherited collection. As the great generational wealth transfer unfolds, museums across the country have received a remarkable number of major cash donations in the first half of this year alone. Here are some of the most notable.
This year’s top donations
$116M to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
$23M to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art
$15M to the Phillips Collection in D.C.
$3M to the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia
$3M to the Rockwell Museum in Corning, New York
$2M to the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester
$1.5 Million to the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale
$1M and 100 ceramics works to the Oakland Museum of California
$116M to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
From the Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation
The National Gallery of Art in Washington faced considerable political scrutiny this year, as did many federally supported cultural institutions. In April, however, the museum received a historic, transformative gift of $116 million from the Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary. The gift endows in perpetuity Across the Nation, the museum’s nationwide lending program launched in 2025, which lets participating museums receive works from the National Gallery on long-term loan at no cost. Since the program launched in spring 2025, it has reached nearly 900,000 visitors across 10 partner museums. The next cycle of Across the Nation will open in fall 2027 and run through 2029, with partner institutions to be announced.
Rales, who is on Forbes’s 2026 Billionaires list, has been a leading benefactor of the National Gallery for two decades. The American businessman co-founded Danaher Corporation with his brother Steven Rales in 1984 and established the art museum Glenstone with his wife, Emily Wei Rales, in 2006. In 2021, Rales donated $1.9 billion to the Glenstone Foundation, increasing the museum’s assets to $4.6 billion, nearly equal to those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He served as president of the National Gallery of Art from 2019 to 2024.
The Smithsonian National Gallery of Art in D.C.
Photo by J. David Ake/Getty Images
$75M for the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture and Design at Vanderbilt University
From Jensen Huang and Lori Huang
If the art world has not yet succeeded in attracting the immense wealth accumulating in the technology industry, some of its biggest entrepreneurs are involved in cultural production on a significant scale. Many have publicly acknowledged the enduring value of the arts and humanities alongside, rather than despite, the A.I. revolution. “Technology expands what we can build. Art and design determine why we build it. Together they shape civilization,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently said in a statement.
In July, Huang and his wife, Lori Huang, made a $75 million matching gift to establish the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture and Design at Vanderbilt University’s planned San Francisco campus. The new college will build on the nearly 120-year legacy of the California College of the Arts, which had announced earlier that it would close at the end of the 2026-27 academic year. Vanderbilt will now take ownership of CCA’s campus and establish new undergraduate and graduate programming there. The gift follows a $22.5 million matching contribution made by the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation to CCA in February 2025, bringing the Huangs’ combined support for the two related initiatives to $97.5 million.
The California College of the Arts (CCA).
Photo: Jason O’Rear
$23M to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art
From the Rubio Butterfield Foundation
In April, Away co-founder Jennifer Rubio and tech billionaire Stewart Butterfield (who recently announced their separation) made a $23 million gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art through the Rubio Butterfield Foundation, permanently endowing paid internships for undergraduate and graduate students. The gift is intended to expand equitable access to museum careers by removing the financial barriers that often prevent students from participating. The Met already operates the largest fully paid museum internship program in the country, and the new endowment will allow it to maintain and strengthen that commitment in perpetuity.
In addition to the internship endowment, the Rubio Butterfield Foundation made a separate pledge to support the Met’s new Tang Wing for modern and contemporary art, which is scheduled to open in 2030. The amount of that pledge was not disclosed. The donation is another notable example of Silicon Valley wealth flowing into the arts.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
$15M to the Phillips Collection in D.C.
From the Sherman Fairchild Foundation
In June, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., received a historic $15 million gift from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation—the largest donation in the museum’s history. Of that, $11.75 million will go to strengthen the institution’s endowment, with permanent funds for conservation leadership, staff support and a newly established capital reserve. The remaining funding will support programming, facilities planning and upgrades to the museum’s digital infrastructure. The gift advances the Phillips Collection’s 2025-29 strategic plan under director Jonathan P. Binstock, providing greater long-term stability while helping the museum address maintenance, staffing and other infrastructure needs.
The Sherman Fairchild Foundation is a private U.S. charitable organization established in 1955 by inventor and industrialist Sherman Fairchild, founder of Fairchild Camera and Instrument and a pioneer in aviation and semiconductor technology. Based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, the foundation reported approximately $689.6 million in assets for fiscal year 2024 and primarily supports higher education, fine arts and cultural institutions.
The Phillips Collection in D.C.
Phillips Collection
$3M to the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia
From Dr. Carol R. Angle
In March, the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia received a $3 million gift from Dr. Carol R. Angle to permanently endow its Curator of Collections position. “This endowment will support critical exhibition development and collections research, strengthening the museum’s ability to serve our students, faculty, and community for generations,” Kristen L. Nassif, Ph.D., the museum’s Curator of Collections, said in a statement.
A retired physician and researcher based in Charlottesville, Angle spent 45 years at the University of Nebraska Medical Center as a pediatrician, nephrologist and toxicologist, becoming one of the country’s leading experts on lead poisoning. Profoundly deaf since the age of 25, she has long maintained a strong interest in the visual arts. Angle has supported the Fralin for more than two decades, serving on both its Advisory Board and Collections Committee. She had previously endowed the Angle Exhibition Fund and the Carol R. Angle Academic Curator position, making the latest gift a culmination of her longstanding support for the museum’s curatorial program.
The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia.
Courtesy the Fralin Museum of Art
$3M to the Rockwell Museum in Corning, New York
From Mary Ellen Spurrier
In January, the Rockwell Museum in Corning, New York, announced a $3 million gift from Rochester-based philanthropist Mary Ellen Spurrier to support long-term strategy and expand its programming and collection. The gift will help advance the museum’s newly adopted strategic plan, Framing the Future: The Rockwell at 50 and Beyond, which rethinks what an American art museum can be for the next generation. A central priority is broadening the way the museum narrates the complexity of American stories. Announced as the Rockwell celebrates its 50th anniversary, the funding supports exhibitions, as well as the commission of an original tapestry by Diné textile artist D.Y. Begay, set to be unveiled in fall 2026.
A longtime supporter of the museum, Spurrier also played a key role in advancing the Rockwell’s presentation, study and stewardship of contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on Native American art. In 2025, the museum welcomed the inaugural Mary Spurrier Fellow in Native American Art, supporting research into Indigenous materials in the collection and adding missing information about historic beadwork, painted hides and the Great Plains communities that produced them.
The Rockwell Museum.
Courtesy the Rockwell Museum
$2M to the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester
From Mary Ellen Burris
In April, philanthropist Mary Ellen Burris made a $2 million gift to the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) in Rochester, bringing the museum closer to making general admission permanently free. Adult admission currently costs $20, an amount the museum recognizes as a barrier to visitation for many individuals and families. The Free for All Endowment seeks to restore the founding vision of Emily Sibley Watson, who gave the museum to the community in 1913 as a place of education and enjoyment for everyone. (For its first 56 years, MAG offered free admission.)
A graduate of the University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education and Human Development, Burris is a former Wegmans executive who spent nearly five decades shaping the grocery company’s consumer strategy. She has also been a longtime supporter of the university, serving as an advisor and philanthropic partner to the Warner School and supporting UR Medicine’s Saunders Center for Orthopaedics & Physical Performance. MAG has now raised more than $9 million toward the endowment and plans to make admission free in 2027.
The Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester.
Courtesy the Memorial Art Gallery
$1.5 Million to the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale
From the Jerry Taylor and Nancy Bryant Foundation
In February, the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale received a $1.5 million gift from the Jerry Taylor and Nancy Bryant Foundation to support the development, organization and presentation of exhibitions, as well as the educational programming built around them. The funding will help the museum continue producing exhibitions with meaningful content that can be extended through lectures, tours and other public programs.
Jerry Taylor, former CEO of MCI Communications Corporation, and his wife, Nancy Bryant, established their foundation in 1999 to support higher education, the arts and community-based human services. Over the years, the couple has made several gifts to the museum and other South Florida institutions. In 2022, Taylor and Bryant were inducted into Nova Southeastern University’s Fellows Society Sharks Circle, which recognizes donors whose cumulative giving to the university has reached at least $1 million.
NSU Art Museum.
Courtesy NSU Art Museum
$1M and 100 ceramics works to the Oakland Museum of California
From the Brian and Edith Heath Foundation
In May, the Brian and Edith Heath Foundation donated more than 100 ceramics by Edith Heath, dating from the 1940s to the 1980s, to the Oakland Museum of California, along with a $1 million endowment to support the long-term care of craft and decorative arts in the museum’s collection. OMCA has collected and exhibited Heath’s ceramics since the early 1970s, and the gift strengthens the museum’s ability to place Heath within the broader history of California art, design and material culture. The objects will be incorporated into both the Art and History Galleries, where they will be shown alongside works by other California makers and used in educational programs exploring artistic process, material experimentation and innovation.
A pioneering artist and entrepreneur, Heath transformed modern ceramics through distinctive clay bodies, nature-inspired glazes and forms designed for everyday use. Rejecting both the delicacy of fine china and the idea that meaningful design belonged only to handmade objects, she built Heath Ceramics, whose dinnerware and tile have remained in continuous production for more than 70 years. Her durable, egalitarian designs helped define a California aesthetic rooted in simplicity, resilience and a close relationship with the natural environment.
Oakland Museum of California.
Photo: Christine Cueto
$1M to the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago
From Rick Bayless
In April, the Bayless Family Foundation, established by restaurateur Rick Bayless and his wife, Deann, donated $1 million to the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. The gift will support a $5 million renovation of the museum’s West Wing performing arts space at 1852 W. 19th Street in Harrison Park, in the Pilsen neighborhood. The redesigned venue, set to be renamed Foro de Artes Bayless, will feature an improved stage and sightlines, upgraded audiovisual systems, dressing rooms and other facilities for performers.
Bayless is a chef and the owner of a group of acclaimed Chicago restaurants, including Frontera Grill and Topolobampo. Best known for his work with Mexican cuisine, he has received multiple James Beard Awards, won Top Chef Masters and hosted the PBS series Mexico: One Plate at a Time.
Rick and Deann Bayless have been longtime patrons of the National Museum of Mexican Art, supporting it through donations, collaborations and gifts in kind. Bayless previously served on the museum’s board of trustees, and the couple received the Sandra Cisneros Award at its 2025 Gala de Arte for expanding appreciation of Mexican food and culture and supporting the performing arts.
National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago.
Courtesy the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago
