Chicago’s Art Institute Lands $75 Million for Expansion

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Art Institute of Chicago

Aaron Fleischman and Linford (Lin) Lougheed gave $75 million to support the construction of a new building that will house the museum’s collection of late-19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. The building, to be named for the donors, will give the museum the space to show much more of its collection of artworks. The couple primarily live in Florida, but both have Midwestern roots. Fleischman is from Highland Park, Ill. and Lougheed is from Ottumwa, Iowa.

Fleischman is a retired lawyer and a well-known art collector of modern and contemporary art who has served as a trustee of the museum for nearly 15 years. He founded the Washington law firm, Fleischman and Harding, which was later acquired by another firm, Edwards Angell, in 2011.

Lougheed is an educator and an expert in teaching English as a Foreign Language and English for Special Purposes who has written and edited numerous books on the subjects and test-preparatory materials. He served as a U.S. Foreign Service officer earlier in his career.

University of Wisconsin at Madison

Brothers Jeffrey and Marvin Levy gave $75 million to help pay for the construction of a new engineering building, which will be named for their late brother, Phillip Levy. When completed, the Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center will sit at the center of the university’s seven-building College of Engineering campus.

All three Levy brothers graduated from the university. Marvin earned bachelor’s degrees in education and history in 1968 and a Juris Doctor degree in 1971; and Jeff earned bachelor’s degrees in education and history in 1972. Marvin and Jeff operate Phillips Distributing Corporation, an alcoholic beverages distributor their family founded in Madison in 1928.

Phillip Levy was an interior designer who founded Phillip Levy Fine Furniture and Interior Design in Madison. His projects ranged from country clubs, retail stores, and restaurants to hotels and historic homes in Wisconsin, California, Florida, and Arizona. He earned an English degree in 1964 and led Phillips Home Specialty Stores for two decades. He then moved to California to study at ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles and returned to Madison to start his design firm. Phillip Levy died in 2021 at 78.

Mayo Clinic

Stephen and Barbara Slaggie pledged $50 million to support the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center’s efforts to expand access to cancer care and clinical trials to more patients throughout the country. The efforts aim to use a combination of in-facility, virtual, and in-home care.

The money will help the organization develop new digital tools and partnerships with local health care providers, community groups, and other nonprofits to reach underrepresented people who have lacked access to comprehensive cancer care, screening, and trials. The money will also aid the organization in establishing services to help patients navigate medical costs.

Stephen Slaggie co-founded the Fastenal Company, an industrial manufacturer in Winona, Minn., and formerly owned the Gate City Agency, an insurance and real-estate firm. He has been a Mayo Clinic patient at various times throughout his life. The couple gave Mayo $5 million in 2019 to expand the cancer center.

Corporation for Supportive Housing

MacKenzie Scott gave $40 million through her Yield Giving fund. The gift is unrestricted. The nonprofit’s leaders said in a news release that they plan to use the money to further the group’s four-year effort to help its partner organizations increase affordable and supportive housing units throughout the country, boost economic security for people living and working in supportive housing, and address inequities among Black and Indigenous people living in institutional settings.

Scott is a novelist who helped create Amazon with her former husband, Jeff Bezos. Her net worth is estimated at $34 billion, and she has given a total of more than $17.3 billion to more than 2,000 nonprofits in the last four years. Scott appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors in 2020.

The Juilliard School

John and Jody Arnhold gave $20 million through their Arnhold Foundation to support two of the performing-arts college’s programs. Of the total, the couple are giving $15 million to back Creative Enterprise, a program that provides students across the music, dance, and drama divisions with opportunities to participate in creative work across those three disciplines in classroom or workshop settings, and in public presentations that are designed for in-person and virtual audiences.

The Arnholds are donating the remaining $5 million to endow scholarships, performances, and teaching at Juilliard Jazz, the college’s intensive jazz music program, which is led by the prominent trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, a Juilliard alumnus.

John Arnhold co-founded Arnhold LLC, a New York investment firm. Jody Arnhold founded the Dance Education Laboratory, also in New York. The couple are longtime donors who primarily support arts and culture, higher education, and medicine.

University of California at Santa Cruz

Richard (Rick) Sabatte left approximately $20 million to establish the Sabatte Family Scholarship, which will provide undergraduates who demonstrate financial need with full four-year scholarships that will cover tuition, room and board, books, and living expenses.

Sabatte, an heir to a family fortune, earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the university in 1975. In 1910, his grandparents John and Mary Sabatte founded a small dairy business in the Bay Area that his father and uncles developed into Berkeley Farms, an iconic dairy company in Hayward, Calif. The family sold the multimillion-dollar business in 1999 to Dean Foods for an undisclosed sum. Richard Sabatte died last year at 71.

American Heart Association

Sarah (Sally) Ross Soter gave $15 million to support the organization’s Go Red for Women Venture Fund, which aims to invest in and expand scientific research focused on women and speed up the translation of those research findings into better ways to care for patients.

Soter inherited her fortune from her grandfather Stanley Ross, who co-founded the company that later became Ross Laboratories, now a division of Abbott Laboratories.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.