Close of ’97 Brings Large Gifts to Universities, Israeli Museum

A son’s wish to honor his parents has resulted in a $42-million gift to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Martin D. Gruss, senior partner in the New York investment firm Gruss and Company, made the gift through the Beracha Foundation in Jerusalem, a fund established by his late parents, Joseph and Caroline, that he now controls.

The gift will be used to construct a new facility to introduce visitors to the museum’s collection, which comprises fine arts and biblical archaeology and includes the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The elder Mr. Gruss was a successful banker who, with his wife, narrowly escaped the Nazi invasion of Poland. The couple had supported many cultural programs in Israel.

The year’s end brought big gifts to several other institutions:

Bowdoin College has received $35.6-million from investments made and managed by an alumnus. Stanley F. Druckenmiller, managing director at Soros Fund Management in New York, had promised a minimum of $30-million from the fund he started in 1994 and to which he personally contributed $3-million (The Chronicle, November 13).

The late fertilizer tycoon George H. Alber has left behind $32-million to support 10 charities in his hometown of Marion, Ohio.

The Columbus Foundation will administer the fund, which includes a $28-million trust and $4-million from Mr. Alber’s estate. Ohio State University at Marion will reap one third of the fund’s income, with the remainder to be shared among nine other local non-profit organizations.

A Twin Cities family that wishes to remain anonymous has given $30-million to the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, for its Minneapolis-based Graduate School of Business. The family had originally pledged $10-million.

The money initially will endow chairs in global marketing and global-technology management, and establish a visiting professorship and a scholarship fund. Eventually, the university plans to create eight additional professorships with the money.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received $25-million from Ray Stata, founder of Analog Devices in Norwood, Mass., and his wife, Maria, for a new computer-sciences complex. The structure will bring together M.I.T.’s laboratories in computer science, artificial intelligence, and information and decision systems, and will provide facilities for faculty members in linguistics and philosophy.

The Center for Creative Studies in Detroit has received $20-million from Josephine Ford, a granddaughter of Henry Ford and widow of Walter Buhl Ford II, a prominent architect and arts patron in the city.

The gift will be used to expand and endow the center, which comprises the College of Art and Design and the Institute of Music and Dance and is located in Detroit’s downtown University Cultural Center.

The University of Arizona has received two gifts of $10-million each: one from Mel and Enid Zuckerman, founders of the Canyon Ranch health resorts in Tucson, Ariz., and Lenox, Mass., for the College of Medicine; and one from Karl Eller of Phoenix, former chairman of Circle K Corporation, for the College of Business and Public Administration.

The Zuckermans’ gift will support a center in preventive health. Mr. Eller’s gift will endow the Center for the Study of Private Market Economy, which he established in 1983.