University trustee Gerry Lenfest has pledged $30 million to help fund the School of the Arts building in Manhattanville, University President Bollinger announced Thursday night.
The University called it the largest gift ever made for the arts at Columbia, and said that the building—scheduled to open in fall 2016—will be named the Lenfest Center for the Arts.
At the Alexander Hamilton Medal dinner, Lenfest told Spectator that his decision was based on a lifelong love of music—he chairs the Board of Trustees of the Curtis Institute of Music—and a passion for art that he developed as chair of the board of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
“I had never had much money to buy art, but accumulated what I could, and have liked music and painting and sculpture. It’s sort of a break from my business life—it’s a different world, and I like it,” Lenfest said.
Lenfest said that he had considered funding the academic conference center planned for Manhattanville, but decided that the School of the Arts had a greater need for the fundraising help.
The School of the Arts building will be one of the first buildings to open on the Manhattanville campus, along with the Jerome L. Greene Science Center and the academic conference center.
Dubbed the “Lantern building” by architect Renzo Piano, it will be one of the smallest buildings on the new campus and will include a film screening center, performance spaces, and an art gallery.
Lenfest said he had no interest in involving himself in planning the building, but just wanted to be a part of what he called Columbia’s “great new chapter” in Manhattanville.
“I’m happy to be a part of the founding group ... because it’s the beginning, and it’s always very hard in the beginning,” he said.
Lenfest, Law ’58, sold Lenfest Communications, the company he started in 1974, to Comcast in 2000 for $6.71 billion—and has donated extensively to Columbia since then.
In 2006, he pledged $37.5 million in matching funds to the Arts and Sciences to create endowed faculty chairs, and $10.5 million for endowed professorships at the Law School. He has also donated $2.5 million to establish five assistant professor positions for the Core Curriculum, $15 million for Law School housing, and donated to the Campbell Sports Center and the Earth Institute.
On Thursday night, he was honored for that generosity with the Alexander Hamilton Medal, the highest award given by Columbia College.
“The breadth of this generosity, to this institution, when considered all together, is really quite stunning,” Bollinger said in a speech. “It has produced something that could be called the Lenfest effect, rippling across our campus and well beyond.”
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