A $100-Million Gift Revs Up a Calif. Museum of Classic Cars
By Caroline Bermudez
Contributor
May 1, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
How much: An automobile collection of 135 cars, a 300,000-square-foot building, and cash, which together total $100-million.
Who gave it: Margie Petersen and the Margie & Robert E. Petersen Foundation. Ms. Petersen’s late husband, Robert, was the founder and chairman of Petersen Publishing, a Los Angeles company that had dozens of magazines under its umbrella, including Motor Trend and Hot Rod. Mr. Petersen died in 2007.
Who got it: The Petersen Automotive Museum, in Los Angeles, which Mr. Petersen founded.
Purpose: The gift is mostly unrestricted, and the museum plans to use the money for maintenance and repairs, to hire a fund-raising staff, to create an endowment, to start a library of its thousands of volumes of books, magazines, and catalogs, and to operate the May Family Discovery Center, an interactive exhibit for children.
How the gift came about: Buddy Pepp, executive director of the museum, says the amount was a surprise. The organization learned six weeks ago that it would receive a gift and only about one week before it was announced did it find out how large the donation was.
Mr. Pepp’s favorite car in the museum’s collection: The actor Steve McQueen’s beloved 1957 Jaguar XKSS.—Caroline Bermudez
For details about other new gifts, including $41-million to the Hunstman Cancer Institute, go to http://philanthropy.com/topdonors. Send gift news to gifts@philanthropy.com.
