Dec. 6, 2001

The Nasher Foundation of Dallas, Texas, is giving $2.5 million in honor of its founder, Raymond D. Nasher, to support a new art museum at Duke University, president Nannerl O. Keohane announced Thursday.

The gift was announced by Keohane at a dinner Thursday evening honoring Nasher, and followed a groundbreaking ceremony attended by members of the Nasher family and other supporters of the new museum.

Construction is to begin this spring; the $20 million facility, to be called the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2003.

"Ray Nasher has been instrumental in envisioning and then planning this marvelous new Nasher Museum of Art. This generous gift from the Nasher Foundation, when added to Mr. Nasher's earlier gift, will make it possible for Duke to begin to build a museum of real significance," Keohane said. "Rafael Vinoly's design is itself a work of art. I am confident Duke will have a spectacular building that will serve the university's educational mission."

A computer rendering shows patrons in the Mary D.B.T. Semans Grand Hall of the proposed Nasher Museum of Art. Rafael Vinoly Architects PC, copyright 2001

Nasher, an internationally renowned art collector, philanthropist and real estate developer who graduatedfrom Duke in 1943, gave Duke $7.5 million in November 1998 toward the cost of the new museum. The Uruguayan-born Vinoly, perhaps best known for his design of the Tokyo International Forum, was selected from among a small group of internationally prominent architects in March 2000.

"I am very pleased that the Nasher Foundation Board is making this gift in my honor," Nasher said. "Rafael Vinoly has created a wonderful space for both the teaching and display of art, and I am delightedthat the Foundation joins me in supporting it. I have no doubt that the museum will be a great resource for everyone at Duke, as well as for the people of Durham, all of North Carolina and the South."

The Nasher family has strong and deep ties to Duke. Nasher served on the university board of trustees from 1968 through 1974 when he was elected Trustee Emeritus. His daughter Nancy Nasher Haemisegger currently serves on Duke's Board of Trustees and the board of the Nasher Foundation; she is a graduate of Duke Law School, a lifetime member of the law school's board of visitors and a member of the steering committee of the Campaign for Duke, the university's $2 billion fund-raising campaign.

The new museum will consist of five separate pavilions, including three galleries; an auditorium and a building housing classrooms and offices, all linked by a glass-roofed atrium. It will be located on the northeast corner of Anderson Street and Duke University Road.

In October, The Duke Endowment of Charlotte announced it was contributing $2.5 million to the museum to name the atrium Mary D.B.T. Semans Grand Hall, in honor of its chairman emerita and former Duke University trustee Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans.

The Nasher Foundation is a private Dallas foundation founded by Raymond Nasher. Its major project to date is the development of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, a new institution dedicated to the display and study of modern sculpture.

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