Guggenheim Gets Pledge of $50-Million; Other Gifts

A trustee of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York, has pledged $50-million to the institution’s foundation.

Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Cleveland-based insurance company Progressive Corporation, had promised $10-million in 1995 to refurbish the museum’s theater and to endow educational programs related to its use. He had said he would give $1-million a year over 10 years.

Now he has paid out that original commitment and promised the museum an additional $10-million per year for the next four years. He will put those funds into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s endowment, which now stands at $47-million.

The foundation administers funds for the flagship museum on Fifth Avenue, as well as for other branches in Berlin; Bilbao, Spain; New York, which has a second collection in SoHo; and Venice.

Mr. Lewis’s gift has spurred other donations to the endowment: Ronald O. Perelman, the foundation’s president and chairman of Revlon Consumer Products, has added $5-million to a $20-million gift he made in 1994, and other trustees have pledged $8-million in new commitments.

Several other institutions have received big gifts.

* The Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties, in West Palm Beach, Fla., has received stock valued at approximately $30-million from a North Palm Beach couple to set up a fund to benefit public education.

The gift from Robert Pew and his wife, Mary, increases the foundation’s total assets — which had stood at $54-million — by more than 50 per cent. The Pew Public Education Fund is expected to make its first grants later this year or in early 1999. Its mission is to improve education for poor children by developing new teaching strategies in the counties’ 150 public schools. The fund is expected to award $1.4-million in grants annually.

Mr. Pew is chairman and retired chief executive officer of Steelcase Inc., an office-furniture manufacturer based in Grand Rapids, Mich. The donation consists of 800,000 shares in that company.

* The Ames Free Library of Easton, Mass., and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, have each received $10-million bequests from Fanny Holt Ames, the heiress to the Ames Shovel Works fortune.

The gifts came from a charitable remainder trust that is being paid out upon the recent death of Mrs. Ames’s sister, Edna.

Fanny Ames died in 1986. She had stipulated that the library, where she was secretary of the board of directors for 50 years, use the money to maintain the children’s wing and provide services to young readers. To that end, the library will use the endowment income to hire librarians, buy books, and improve technology.

The gift to the medical center was unrestricted. In 1994, the Deaconess Hospital — which had not yet merged with Beth Israel Hospital — received an unrestricted gift of $5-million from a previous trust established by Mrs. Ames. The medical center intends to use the current gift to endow research, education, patient care, and community-service programs.

Mrs. Ames was the widow of William Hawden Ames, whose great-grandfather founded the tool factory in North Easton, Mass., in 1803.

Other recent gifts:

Adams State College (Colo.): Stock valued at $4,600,000 from William A. Porter of Palo Alto, Cal., chairman of the E-Trade Group, for technology and scholarships.

Iona College (N.Y.): $5,000,000 from Joseph M. Murphy of Scarsdale, N.Y., founder of Country Bank and chairman of Value Investors, and his wife, JoAnn, president of Ellinghouse and Stacy Realty and vice-chair of Country Bank, for capital improvements.

Providence Portland Medical Center (Ore.): $1,500,000 from an anonymous couple to establish a professorship in cancer research.

U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: $4,400,000 bequest from the estate of Wade L. Cavin of Durham, N.C., founder of Cavin’s, a copying-machine business, and former mayor of Durham, to endow scholarships.