With a bigger endowment, the ICA will depend less on hard-to-predict attendance figures and the generosity of donors.
“It says to me that the ICA is really thinking about their future,’’ said Tom Lentz, director of the Harvard Art Museums, which has a $581 million endowment.
The ICA’s announcement is the latest move in an unprecedented decadelong building and fund-raising boom at local museums. Just last week, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum opened a $114 million wing to the public, drawing on a $180 million campaign due for completion by December 2013. After a $504 million campaign, the Museum of Fine Arts opened its Art of the Americas Wing in 2010, followed by renovations to open a contemporary art wing last year.
The Harvard Art Museums will open an expanded and renovated museum complex next year. And just two months ago, the Peabody Essex Museum announced its own record-breaking $650 million campaign, with roughly $200 million going to fund an expansion and $350 million going to its endowment.
“The buzzword now is sustainability, and a lot of institutions are getting a lot more serious about putting themselves on the right long-term footing,’’ said Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation. “This is a healthy and good thing.’’
ICA leaders contemplated launching an endowment campaign not long after completing a $75 million building campaign in 2008. But they put the idea off because of the lagging economy. It was not until October 2010 that the museum’s board decided to move forward.
While the ICA will not offer specific donation figures, it revealed that $17 million of the $25 million raised so far has come from a small group of longtime supporters, including Barbara Lee, Ellen Matilda Poss, board chairman Paul Buttenwieser, board president Charles Brizius, and Fotene Demoulas, cochairwoman of the ICA’s 75th anniversary gala.
Poss’s gift endows the director’s position, Lee’s gift endows the chief curator’s post, and Demoulas’s gift has resulted in naming the ICA’s east gallery after her.
