Art Institute Of Chicago Receives Largest Cash Gift In Its History

By Marielle Shaw in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 27, 2016 8:42PM

The holidays are over, but the gifts keep coming for the Art Institute of Chicago. It wasn't long ago we checked out The New Contemporary, a huge gift of contemporary art from Gael Neeson and Stefan Edlis that was valued at 400 million dollars. The donation added a new gallery full with amazing work by the likes of Warhol, Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelley, and was the largest gift of art in the museum's history.

And the historic gifts keep on coming, too. Tuesday, it was announced that the Art Institute of Chicago had received the largest cash gift in its history, of over 35 million dollars earmarked for acquiring new works. The generous gift comes from one of the museum's long time financial supporters, Dorothy Braude Edinburg. Edinburg passed away in January of 2015, but left the instructions for the enormous donation in her will.

Edinburg was also a well known art collector, and had contributed over 1500 works to the Art Institute in the last 25 years, according to the Tribune. She was an avid collector with a special relationship with the Art Institute, always looking to help improve their collection along with her own. In a statement to the Tribune, Douglas Druick, the president of the Art Institute, named Edinburg as one of the most generous benefactors in the history of the museum, calling the bequeathal "extraordinary double duty" for someone who had already made "transformative" changes to the museum with earlier gifts.

We don't know what the rest of 2016 will bring for the Art Institute, but we're excited to see what such a gift could bring to the already amazing institution. And with winter weekdays boasting free admission until Feb. 11, you have little excuse to miss out on what's new and exciting at the Art Institute.