June 18, 1998 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Sara Lee Corporation has announced that it will donate works of art worth approximately $100-million to U.S. museums as a gift to mark the new millennium. The company will give away 35 to 40 paintings and sculptures to 20 museums in cities where it has significant business interests.
The Art Institute of Chicago, located just a few blocks from the company’s global headquarters, will be the biggest winner, receiving a dozen works of art, including paintings by Fernand Leger and Henri Matisse, and “Young Woman Bathing Her Feet in a Brook,” by Camille Pisarro.
The National Gallery of Art, in Washington, will get a painting by Roger de La Fresnaye, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, will receive a work by Claude Monet, “Jean Monet on His Mechanical Horse.”
The balance of the donations will be announced periodically until the end of the year, in cities where the remaining 17 museums are located. Among the intended recipients are the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, in Laurel, Miss., the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond.
The contributions will come from Sara Lee’s corporate art collection, which was purchased from the private collection of the company’s founder, Nathan Cummings.
John H. Bryan, chief executive officer of Sara Lee, said, “Our purpose in making this gift is to demonstrate our strong belief in the importance of good corporate citizenship and in the positive influence of art on society.”
Beginning next spring, the art works to be donated will embark on a traveling exhibition that will culminate in a final exhibition at Chicago’s Art Institute, in 2000.
