The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) has benefitted from the largesse of the hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin, who has donated $40m to the institution. The gift was made through Griffin’s charity, the Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund; Griffin, founder of the company Citadel, is worth $7bn according to Forbes.
“The unrestricted gift will support MoMA’s mission to provide education and exhibitions of modern and contemporary art to a global audience,” says a museum statement. The museum’s east wing, designed by Philip Johnson in 1964, will be named after Griffin.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Griffin also gave $10m to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago earlier this year. The fourth-floor galleries of the MCA have subsequently been renamed the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art.
Chicago-based Griffin is, meanwhile, a trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the 6,200 sq. ft lobby of the new museum building, which opened earlier this year in downtown Manhattan, is named after the entrepreneur.