The $650 million total eclipses the previous record set by the Museum of Fine Arts with its $504 million campaign, completed in 2008, for its own recent expansion.
Once the Peabody Essex’s campaign and expansion are completed in 2016, the museum projects that it will have an endowment of $630 million. The MFA’s current endowment is $548 million.
Flexing that kind of fund-raising muscle is sure to get attention, especially during an economic recession.
“This is big, really big,’’ said Patricia Jacoby, the former MFA deputy director who led that museum’s fund-raising effort.
The Peabody Essex will devote $350 million of the campaign total to its endowment, a move the museum says will propel its endowment into the top 10 among art museums nationwide.
Of the rest of the campaign, $200 million will fund the museum’s 175,000-square-foot expansion. Another $100 million will pay for infrastructure improvements and other initiatives.
With these plans, the 212-year-old museum will nearly double the amount it can draw each year from endowment proceeds, raising the percentage of the annual budget the endowment covers from its current level of 24 percent to 55 percent.
That will create stability even in times of economic turmoil.
The museum’s focus on endowment is a departure at a time when institutions often emphasize building expansions to entice donors.
“Too many times art museums have found themselves investing way too much money in an expansion project and then not have the capability to support it long term,’’ said the Peabody Essex executive director, Dan Monroe. “This is a bit unorthodox, but we’ve got a strong financial base, and we’re thinking about the long term.’’
The expansion will add up to 75,000 square feet in gallery space, along with more education space and improvements for storage and conservation.
The Peabody Essex’s 2003 expansion, designed by Moshe Safdie, will remain untouched, as will the historic East India Marine Hall.
Because of its limited footprint, sections of the museum built in the 1950s and 1980s - spaces currently housing a restaurant and utilities - will be demolished to make way for new construction.
