The Cleveland Museum of Art received a $25 million challenge gift from The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, the museum announced on June 19, 2024. The gift, made through board chair Ellen Stirn Mavec, funds four components of the museum’s strategic plan.

The largest portion, $15 million, goes to the CMA’s exhibitions program. Another $5 million permanently funds the curator of decorative arts position. The remaining $5 million is split between the museum’s landscape master plan ($2.5 million) and the renovation of the north lobby ($2.5 million), both announced earlier in 2024.

The landscape funding supports maintenance and development of the CMA’s Fine Arts Garden, which has been open to the public since 1928 and contains works including Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker and the Fountain of the Waters by Chester A. Beach.

The decorative arts funding is the first gift of its kind at the CMA, combining support for both the curatorial position and the curator’s research and exhibition work. Ada de Wit, who joined the museum in August 2023 from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, currently holds the position.

Source: https://www.clevelandart.org/about/press/cleveland-museum-art-announces-25-million-gift-kelvin-and-eleanor-smith-foundation