Billionaire Ken Griffin Gives $125 Million to Science Museum in Chicago
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
October 3, 2019 | Read Time: 1 minute
Chicago billionaire Ken Griffin now has a major museum named for him. The financier announced Thursday he gave $125 million through his Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.
The institution will be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.
This isn’t Griffin’s first nine-figure donation. He gave $150 million to Harvard, his alma mater, in 2014 primarily for financial aid. He contributed $125 million in 2107 to the University of Chicago to hire more economics faculty members and to support financial aid and research programs.
Griffin founded Citadel Investment Group, now a $32 billion hedge fund in Chicago, in 1990. Forbes pegs his wealth at $12.5 billion.
Including his latest gift, he has given a total of about $580 million to nonprofits since 2006, according to a Chronicle tally, and he appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors for his 2014 Harvard donation.
About 21 percent of his total giving has gone to arts and culture groups, including the $25 million he gave earlier this year to the Shed, a new performing and visual arts center in New York; $40 million to New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2015; two gifts totaling $20 million last year to Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he has a home; and $19 million to the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006; among others.
Maria Di Mento directs the annual Philanthropy 50 , a comprehensive report on America’s top donors. She writes about wealthy philanthropists, arts organizations, and key trends, among other topics. She recently wrote about a $100 million commitment from Nicole Shanahan for reproductive research and other causes.
