Shelby White

Last updated

Shelby White (born 1938) is an American investor, art collector, and philanthropist. She serves on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art [1] and is a founding trustee of the Leon Levy Foundation. [2]

Contents

Early life

White was born in 1938 [3] and grew up in Brooklyn. [4] She received a bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College and a master's from Columbia University. [3] After college, White married investment banker Rodney L. White, who died in 1969. [5]

In the 1970s, White married Leon Levy, an American investor and philanthropist, and she and her husband developed an interest in antiquities and started bidding at New York auctions in 1975. [3] [6]

Career

White began her career as an author and financial journalist and wrote for publications including Forbes, Town and Country and The New York Times. [7] In 1992, White published the book What Every Woman Should Know About Her Husband’s Money. [8] Her March 1978 article, “The Office Pass,” in Across the Board magazine was among the first on the topic of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Over the next several decades, White and Levy accumulated a substantial collection of objects from different time periods and international origins. Many of the pieces in their collection are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [9]

In the early 1990s, White and Levy gave 16 artifacts to the British Museum after having been shown evidence that the objects may have been surreptitiously removed from Roman ruins in Icklingham, England. [1] In 2008, White returned 9 pieces that the Italian government suggested had been questionably exported. [10]

The Levy-White collection has been scrutinized for looted objects: in a 2000 article, archaeologists David Gill and Christopher Chippindale stated that 93 percent of the works at the exhibition Glories of the Past: Ancient Art from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection had no known provenance. [11]

Upon search warrants issued by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office on 28 June 2021, and April 27, 2022, objects were seized from White's Manhattan home and were returned to Turkey and Italy, these objects constituting "evidence of criminal possession of stolen property in the first, second, third, and fourth degrees, as well as of a conspiracy to commit those crimes" [12] In 2021 and 2022, investigators from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office returned 71 artifacts from the Levy-White collection to multiple countries, including Yemen, Turkey and Italy. [8] The Office of Manhattan District Attorney General seized 89 stolen antiquities, valued at $69 million and originating from 10 different countries, and returned some of them to Turkey [13] and Yemen. [14]

In May 2023, Chinese antiquities loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Shelby White were seized and returned to the Chinese Consulate, [15] and an alabaster bull looted from Uruk was returned to Iraq. [16] In March, Bragg’s office “thank(ed) Shelby White for her assistance and cooperation with our investigation.” [17]

In 1995, White and her husband made a donation of $20 million for the renovation and expansion of the Met's Greek and Roman Galleries; the Met’s largest cash donation up to that time. Philippe de Montebello, the Met’s director, said the gift “moves us significantly toward finally making the broad spectrum of our Greek and Roman holdings accessible to all visitors.” [18]

In 2000, White was appointed to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, a government organization formed in 1983 to help combat illicit international trade of antiquities. [1]

After her husband's death in 2003, White established the Leon Levy Foundation,which has awarded more than half a billion dollars in total grants since its founding. Through the Foundation, White has funded her philanthropic efforts including a $25 million donation to New York City parks in 2008; $3.25 million for an addition to the Brooklyn Public Library in 2010; more than $10 million since 2007 to nearly two dozen institutions from the National Park Service to the New York Philharmonic to identify, preserve and digitize archival collections so that they are available online to scholars and the public; $13.5 million in 2011 for the founding , in partnership with the Bahamas National Trust, of the 30-acre Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve on the Island of Eleuthera; $3.7 million in 2007 for the creation of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center, which the foundation further endowed with a $10 million gift in 2024; and $200 million to NYU in 2006 for the creation of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World for doctoral and post doctoral students that NYU President John Sexton said, would “chart a new course that will transform the way antiquity is conceived and taught, without geographic or cultural boundaries.” [19] [20] [21] [22] [23]

In 2017, White received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, a private philanthropic award established in 2001. [24]

Shelby White and Leon Levy Information Commons room at the Central Library of the Brooklyn Public Library 12282022 WikiWednesday Salon December 2022 BPL Hybrid sign.jpg
Shelby White and Leon Levy Information Commons room at the Central Library of the Brooklyn Public Library

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metropolitan Museum of Art</span> Art museum in New York City

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the fourth-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million visitors in 2023, it is the most-visited museum in the United States and the fifth-most visited art museum in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Modern Art</span> Art museum in Manhattan, New York City, U.S.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The institution was conceived in 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan. Initially located in the Heckscher Building on Fifth Avenue, it opened just days after the Wall Street Crash. The museum, America's first devoted exclusively to modern art, was led by A. Conger Goodyear as president and Abby Rockefeller as treasurer, with Alfred H. Barr Jr. as its first director. Under Barr's leadership, the museum's collection rapidly expanded, beginning with an inaugural exhibition of works by European modernists. Despite financial challenges, including opposition from John D. Rockefeller Jr., the museum moved to several temporary locations in its early years, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. eventually donated the land for its permanent site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum</span> Art museum in Manhattan, New York

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. It was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, Hilla von Rebay. The museum adopted its current name in 1952, three years after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim. It continues to be operated and owned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frick Collection</span> Art museum in New York City

The Frick Collection is an art museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. It was established in 1935 to preserve the art collection of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. The collection consists of 14th- to 19th-century European paintings, as well as other pieces of European fine and decorative art. It is located at the Henry Clay Frick House, a Beaux-Arts mansion designed for Henry Clay Frick. The Frick also houses the Frick Art Research Library, an art history research center established by Frick's daughter Helen Clay Frick in 1920, which contains sales catalogs, books, periodicals, and photographs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Museum of Natural History</span> Natural history museum in Manhattan, New York

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain about 32 million specimens of plants, animals, fungi, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The museum occupies more than 2,500,000 sq ft (232,258 m2). AMNH has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brooklyn Museum</span> Art museum in Brooklyn, New York

The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet (52,000 m2), the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Park Slope neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the museum's Beaux-Arts building was designed by McKim, Mead & White.

Leon Levy was an American investor, mutual fund manager, and philanthropist. At his death, Forbes magazine called him “a Wall Street investment genius,” who helped create both mutual funds and hedge funds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morgan Library & Museum</span> Museum and library in Manhattan, New York

The Morgan Library & Museum is a museum and research library at 225 Madison Avenue in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Completed in 1906 as the private library of the banker J. P. Morgan, the institution has more than 350,000 objects. As of 2024, the museum is directed by Colin B. Bailey and governed by a board of trustees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Bogdanos</span> American lawyer

Colonel Matthew Bogdanos is an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, author, boxer, and a retired colonel in the United States Marine Corps. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Bogdanos deployed to Afghanistan where he was awarded a Bronze Star for actions against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In 2003, while on active duty in the Marine Corps, he led an investigation into the looting of Iraq's National Museum, and was subsequently awarded the National Humanities Medal for his efforts. Returning to the District Attorney’s Office in 2010, he created and still heads the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, “the only one of its kind in the world.” The unit investigated looted art and helped repatriate them to their countries of origin. Matthew Bogdanos has faced opposition during his tenure at the Antiquities Trafficking Unit from museums impacted by his investigations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Looted art</span> Art that was taken illegally

Looted art has been a consequence of looting during war, natural disaster and riot for centuries. Looting of art, archaeology and other cultural property may be an opportunistic criminal act or may be a more organized case of unlawful or unethical pillage by the victor of a conflict. The term "looted art" reflects bias, and whether particular art has been taken legally or illegally is often the subject of conflicting laws and subjective interpretations of governments and people; use of the term "looted art" in reference to a particular art object implies that the art was taken illegally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New York Public Library Main Branch</span> Library in Manhattan, New York

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building is the flagship building in the New York Public Library system in the Midtown neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The branch, one of four research libraries in the library system, has nine divisions. Four stories of the structure are open to the public. The main entrance steps are at Fifth Avenue at its intersection with East 41st Street. As of 2015, the branch contains an estimated 2.5 million volumes in its stacks. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark, a National Register of Historic Places site, and a New York City designated landmark in the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maxwell L. Anderson</span> Art museum director (born 1956)

Maxwell L. Anderson is an American art historian, former museum administrator, and non-profit executive, who currently serves as President of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Anderson previously served as Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1998 to 2003, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art from 2006 to 2011, and director of Dallas Museum of Art from 2011 to 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leon Levy Foundation</span>

The Leon Levy Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation based in New York City. It was created in 2004 from the estate of Leon Levy, a Wall Street investor and philanthropist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal</span> 2009 controversy

The Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal started in 2009 when representatives of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores received a large number of clay bullae and tablets originating in the ancient Near East. The artifacts were intended for the Museum of the Bible, funded by the Evangelical Christian Green family, which owns the Hobby Lobby chain. Internal staff had warned superiors that the items had dubious provenance and were potentially looted from Iraq.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library</span> Library in Manhattan, New York

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL), formerly known as the Mid-Manhattan Library, is a branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL) at the southeast corner of 40th Street and Fifth Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is diagonally across from the NYPL's Main Branch and Bryant Park to the northwest. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library has space for 400,000 volumes across a basement and seven above-ground stories. Its design includes 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2) of event space and 1,500 seats for library users.

Douglas Arthur Joseph "Dynamite" Latchford was a British art dealer, smuggler and author. He is known for being a prominent collector and trader of Cambodian statues and artefacts, which he illegally smuggled out of the country during the civil war and Khmer Rouge eras, and sold to prominent museums and art collectors. He was charged with fraud in 2019 for falsifying the origins of traded antiquities. Since his death in 2020, millions of dollars worth of artefacts smuggled by Latchford have been repatriated to Cambodia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">7 West 54th Street</span> Building in Manhattan, New York

7 West 54th Street is a commercial building in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is along 54th Street's northern sidewalk between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. The four-story building was designed by John H. Duncan in the French Beaux-Arts style and was constructed between 1899 and 1900 as a private residence. It is one of five consecutive townhouses erected along the same city block during the 1890s, the others being 5, 11, and 13 and 15 West 54th Street.

Marilynn Alsdorf was a Chicago art collector, philanthropist and museum trustee.

Gianfranco Becchina is an Italian antiquities dealer who has been convicted in Italy of illegally dealing in antiquities.

Nancy Wiener is an antiquities dealer who pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and possession of stolen property.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Honan, William H. (August 15, 2000). "Collector Joins Artifacts Panel, Stirring Debate". The New York Times. Retrieved April 12, 2019.
  2. Kozinn, Allan (May 20, 2014). "$5 Million Gift to Endow Director's Position at Brooklyn Museum". ArtsBeat. Retrieved April 11, 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 Mead, Rebecca (April 2, 2007). "Den of Antiquity". The New Yorker. Retrieved April 9, 2019.
  4. Murphy, Cullen (December 28, 2017). "Hall of Fame: Philanthropists Who Follow Andrew Carnegie's Example". The Hive. Retrieved April 9, 2019.
  5. "RODNEY L. WHITE, INVESTMENT AIDE; Oppenheimer Partner, 39, Drowns in Canada". The New York Times. September 15, 1969. Retrieved April 9, 2019.
  6. Reif, Rita (September 23, 1990). "ANTIQUES; Two Passionate Collectors Share Their Love of History". The New York Times. Retrieved April 12, 2019.
  7. Fabrikant, Geraldine; White, Shelby (April 30, 1995). "Noblesse Oblige . . . With Strings". The New York Times. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
  8. 1 2 Bowley, Graham; Mashberg, Tom (July 17, 2023). "At the Met, She Holds Court. At Home, She Held 71 Looted Antiquities". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved June 18, 2024.
  9. Wilford, John Noble; Glater, Jonathan D. (March 21, 2006). "N.Y.U. and Columbia to Receive $200 Million Gifts for Research". The New York Times. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
  10. Povoledo, Elisabetta (January 18, 2008). "Collector Returns Art Italy Says Was Looted". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved June 18, 2024.
  11. Gill, David; Chippindale, Christopher (July 2000). "Material Consequences of Contemporary Classical Collecting". American Journal of Archaeology . 104 (3): 463–511. doi:10.2307/507226 . Retrieved May 11, 2023.
  12. Voon, Claire (December 2, 2022). "Looted antiquities returned to Turkey and Italy were seized from New York home of Met trustee Shelby White". The Art Newspaper . Retrieved May 11, 2023.
  13. "Manhattan DA Returns Stolen Antiquities to Turkey". New York Almanack. March 28, 2023. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
  14. Ho, Karen K. (April 28, 2023). "Looted Artifacts Returned to Yemen Amid Investigation into Met Trustee's Collection". ARTnews . Retrieved May 11, 2023.
  15. "Manhattan D.A. Bragg Returns Two 7th Century Antiquities to China from The Met". Art Dependence. May 11, 2023.
  16. Cascone, Sarah (April 28, 2023). "U.S. Authorities Repatriated Two Ancient Sculptures to Iraq—One Belonging to Met Trustee Shelby White". Artnet . Retrieved June 19, 2023.
  17. Helmore, Edward (July 22, 2023). "Looted artifacts found in Met trustee's home were bought 'in good faith'". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved June 18, 2024.
  18. "Met Museum Gets Gift for Renovation". The New York Times. September 13, 1995. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved June 18, 2024.
  19. Ryzik, Melena (May 24, 2008). "Big Plans for Parks". The New York Times. Retrieved April 11, 2019.
  20. Rosenberg, Eli (May 9, 2013). "At Brooklyn Library's New Center, Books Are Secondary". City Room. Retrieved April 11, 2019.
  21. Roberts, Sam (October 13, 2009). "Foundation Helps Archives to Go Online". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved June 18, 2024.
  22. Rich, Motoko (February 23, 2008). "New CUNY Center to Focus on the Art of the Biography". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved June 18, 2024.
  23. Pogrebin, Robin (April 1, 2006). "$200 Million Gift Prompts a Debate Over Antiquities". The New York Times. Retrieved April 11, 2019.
  24. Roberts, Sam (November 28, 2014). "With Naming Rights, 'Perpetuity' Doesn't Always Mean Forever". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved June 18, 2024.