Lewis '55 donates $101 million

Billionaire philanthropist and University trustee Peter Lewis '55 will donate $101 million to the University to support the creative and performing arts, President Tilghman announced Saturday.

The donation — the largest in University history — is intended to jumpstart an initiative designed to expand programs in the arts, increase the number of artists teaching and researching at the University and create a new facility for the study and presentation of the creative and performing arts. Lewis has pledged a total of $233 million to the University to date, making him the University's single largest benefactor.

The gift comes in the initial stages of what is expected to be a major University fund-raising campaign to bring in between $1.5 billion and $2 billion over the next five years. The money will go to support top University objectives, including four-year residential colleges, increased financial aid and enhanced offerings in the arts.

"This is the hardest secret I have ever had to keep," Tilghman said in an interview Saturday. She began discussions with Lewis last September, but news of the gift was not confirmed until Friday night's Board of Trustees meeting.

In a report to the trustees, Tilghman described the donation as "a unique moment for the arts at Princeton," allowing the University to attract students who might otherwise discount Princeton because of its relatively few offerings in the arts.

"In order for Princeton to remain the great institution that it is, it must get better all the time," Lewis said in an interview Saturday. "We have to look for where we as a university are competitively challenged."

The proposal to the trustees includes plans for a new interdisciplinary Center for the Creative and Performing Arts and the construction of a new arts complex as part of an "arts neighborhood," either near the McCarter and Berlind theatres or 185 Nassau. Additional exhibition space in the art museum is also planned.

In her report, Tilghman said she envisioned the center as "the hub of a dynamic community of creative endeavor that brings together students with faculty members and artists whose interests are well-suited to Princeton's distinctive conception of undergraduate education."

Funding is also expected for the creation of several new tenure-track and visiting scholar positions in arts departments, including a new Society of Fellows in the Arts that would bring "innovative and early-career artists/scholars" to Princeton.

Student arts organizations can also expect additional financial support and performance space as a result of the gift. Such groups "often find themselves struggling to scrape together the relatively modest sums of money that they require to mount a performance, purchase equipment or arrange a trip," Tilghman wrote in her report, recommending that a fund be established to support student arts groups.

'A Princeton solution'

A plan to bolster the status of creative and performing arts on campus has been widely expected in recent years, as Tilghman has repeatedly reaffirmed her commitment to strengthening University arts programs since she was named president. The recruitment of more students focused on the arts has also been a priority, especially as a part of the planned 500-student increase in the undergraduate study body size by 2007.

Discussions about strengthening the University's arts programs began about three years ago, Tilghman said, when she began asking administrators and students what they would improve about the University.

"It came through loud and clear that we were under-serving students in the creative and performing arts," Tilghman said, citing students' complaints about arts courses filling up quickly and a lack of performance venues. "We don't allow that kind of negligence in other areas, so why had we allowed it in the arts?"

Last spring, Tilghman formed the President's Task Force on the Creative and Performing Arts and asked the committee, chaired by Architecture School Dean Stan Allen GS '88, to analyze the University's arts programs and determine how to strengthen them.

The committee of 13 faculty members and administrators met weekly for 12 weeks during the spring semester and talked with Tilghman regularly before submitting its recommendations in June 2005. After consulting with students, alumni and faculty at the University and elsewhere, the task force devised what Allen calls "a Princeton solution."

Based on the task force's findings, Tilghman rejected the "professional school model," which she argues focuses solely on students who intend to pursue arts-related careers, and instead decided to expand creative arts programs for all students, "not only those who concentrate in departments that bear an obvious relationship to the arts," the report said.

Tilghman also concluded that the creative arts should be more integrated with other disciplines within the University. "The creative arts programs at Princeton have not been, and should not become, isolated intellectual enclaves within the University community," Tilghman, a renowned molecular biologist, wrote in her report.

The benefactor

Lewis, a self-described "half-screwball, half-businessman," is chairman of the board at Progressive Corp., the nation's third-largest auto insurer. In his interview, he said he chose the figure of $101 million to top the last significant donation to the University, Gordon Wu '58's 1996 gift of $100 million.

Among his other contributions are a $60 million donation in 2004 to support the new science library, currently under construction, and his donation of $55 million in 1999 to establish the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.

Matt Margolin '05, former USG president and current University trustee, offered praise for the philanthropist. "Peter Lewis is one of the most amazing people I have met," Margolin said in an email. "His donations over the years have responded to areas of the University that have needed them the most."

Lewis, a former chairman of the board at the Guggenheim Museum, has developed a reputation for demanding that the recipients of his donations behave in a fiscally responsible manner.

In his interview Saturday, however, Lewis appeared to be confident about the way in which Princeton would use his money. "I hope this effort will increase students' loyalty to the University in a way that it can carry them throughout their lives as it has for me," he said.