Philanthropic giving is at the heart of modern American museums—it exists on a scale that makes a European blush with envy. My tenure at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology began last autumn with a singularly important act of philanthropy — Michael J. Kowalski, Chairman of the Museum’s Board of Overseers and CEO of Tiffany & Co., made the Museum a gift of $5 million. This handsome amount enables us to plan a commitment to a capital project forming part of Penn’s auspicious new Making History campaign (see below). Whether we deploy this gift to jumpstart the Museum’s master plan project (drawn up by award-winning British architect, David Chipperfield) or use it to endow a key activity, it will without doubt help us as the Museum shapes its strategy for the 21st century.
Another major gift this fall came from Jill Topkis Weiss, a distinguished Penn and Wharton School alumna (C’89, WG’93), who, upon taking her place on the Museum’s Board of Overseers, gave the Museum $200,000, stipulating only that it should be employed for strategic purposes. Jill recalled fond memories of the Museum as a wonderful place to meet friends and attend lectures in a space imbued with an enduring spirit of place.
Such giving has always formed the core of the Museum. Week by week the list of generous friends and supporters who give to the Museum affirms its long-held affection in the community. Sustaining this support is a congenial team in our Development Office, led most recently by Interim Director of Development, Melissa Sly, who, sad to say, has departed to head a comparable team at the Philadelphia Zoo after a distinguished 6-year stint with the Museum. Board and staff members alike will miss her sense of fun as well as her focused commitment.
The Museum’s new Director of Development is Amanda Mitchell-Boyask, an experienced development officer who has made a big impact on philanthropic campaigns elsewhere in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, and the Wilma Theater, among others.
Penn’s new capital campaign, Making History (http://www.makinghistory.upenn.edu/), affirms Penn President Amy Gutmann’s Penn Compact, which aims both to renew and to shape Penn’s campus and community, reaching out and working with the city and other local, national, and global communities associated with the University. The Museum, with its remarkable collections that encompass many of the world’s major civilizations, will play a particular part in helping Penn build bridges to communities nationally and internationally. But like all organizations in the 21st century, the Museum’s mission has to be shaped to fit new global and cultural needs. We are therefore assessing how to serve our audiences better, whether local ones, for example, via the use of iPods in our galleries or international ones, such as the half-million visitors in China who flocked to the Beijing World Art Museum to see our traveling exhibit on The Royal Tombs of Ur.
In framing our place in the global Digital Age, the generosity of our senior and new Board members and friends remains critical. Each gift is special and thought provoking, continuing a history of affection toward the Museum that we are very happy to recognize and continue to develop.
Richard Hodges, Ph.D
The Williams Director