In the Arts: Miami Science Museum Gets $35-Million Gift
March 30, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Florida philanthropists Phillip and Patricia Frost have pledged $35-million to the effort to build a new home for the Miami Science Museum, The Miami Herald writes.
Including the Frosts’ donation, the museum has raised 60 percent of its $100-million goal for the slow-gestating project and will be able to break ground later this year on the site in downtown Miami. The facility will be renamed for Mr. Frost, a physician and medical entrepreneur, and his wife.
The gift is one of the biggest known pledges to a South Florida cultural institution, exceeded only by an anonymous $90-million donation to the New World Symphony’s new building in Miami Beach.
In other arts news, a Pennsylvania judge ordered state officials and the Barnes Foundation to explain why a lawsuit challenging the relocation of the foundation’s priceless art collection should not be reopened, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In a hearing Tuesday, Judge Stanley R. Ott gave the attorney general’s office and the foundation until mid-April to respond fully to a petition by opponents of the move to rehear the case.
Judge Ott had rejected a previous bid to reopen the case in 2008, but opponents argue that a 2009 documentary brought to light new evidence of state pressure on the foundation to make the move.
