UMMA gifts total $2.5M

Updated 5:10 PM June 17, 2004

UMMA gifts total $2.5M

By Stephanie Rieke
Museum of Art

The U-M Museum of Art (UMMA) is moving closer to its expansion and renovation goal with three new leadership gifts: $1 million from Thomas and Polly Bredt of Portola Valley, Calif.; $1 million from the Anthony Randazzo family of Grosse Pointe; and $500,000 from Ernestine and Herbert Ruben of Princeton, N.J.

The Rubens' gift will be recognized through the naming of the Ernestine Winston Ruben Study Center for Works on Paper. The Bredt and Randazzo gifts will be recognized through the naming of galleries in the expanded and renovated museum.

"I am delighted to report that with these very generous gifts from beloved old and new friends of the Museum of Art, we are well past the halfway mark to the $35 million funding goal for the building project," says James Steward, UMMA director.

The museum launched its public fund-raising campaign May 14 in conjunction with the University's institution-wide campaign, The Michigan Difference. The museum expects to finance the $35 million building project largely through private support. Construction will begin when fund raising is complete.

The Bredts met as undergraduates at U-M (1962 College of Engineering and 1963 LSA, respectively). Tom Bredt holds a master's in electrical engineering from New York University and a doctorate in computer science from Stanford, where he also was on the electrical engineering faculty.

He is managing director of Menlo Ventures, in Menlo Park, Calif., one of Silicon Valley's most successful venture capital firms. Polly Bredt was a doctoral student in speech and hearing sciences at Michigan and has worked as a speech pathologist. The Bredts also are major supporters of the San Jose Museum of Art. The Bredts made a gift of $2 million in 2000 to endow the Bredt Family Professorship in the College of Engineering.

"Tom and I have taken great pleasure in the arts, and we feel strongly about balancing our support of science with the arts. We both were so impressed with James's ambitious vision for the Museum of Art and we look forward to sharing our sustained interest in the arts with others through this gift," Polly Bredt says.

Speaking about his family's gift to the museum in support of its building project, Anthony Randazzo says, "My family and I are really pleased to be a part of the future museum expansion. We made the commitment because we feel the museum expansion is crucial and no one could head up the project better than James Steward." Randazzo is a major southeast Michigan developer and builder. His son, Anthony Jr., will be a freshman at U-M in the fall.

The Rubens are alumni (bachelor's degree 1953 and bachelor of business administration 1952/doctor of laws 1954, respectively). Ernestine Ruben, who serves on UMMA's National Advisory Board, is an internationally exhibited photographer. A major retrospective of her work opens this month at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. She grew up in Detroit and is the granddaughter of Albert Kahn, architect of some of the most significant buildings on campus, including Clements Library and Hill Auditorium.

Herb Ruben, a retired senior vice-president at Merrill Lynch, shares his wife's abiding passion for encouraging students to push the limits of their creativity. In addition to the gift for the Ernestine Winston Ruben Study Center for Works on Paper, Ernestine Ruben's archive (including exhibition prints, photographic negatives and research materials) will come to UMMA through the Rubens' estate plan, enabling scholars and students to study the creative development of an artist over an entire career.

"While at the University of Michigan, I was surrounded by the arts. I know now, more than ever, how essential art is to our culture and why it must be an active ingredient in our education and in our lives. Certain aspects of photography are in jeopardy today and on the brink of extinction. With this gift for a proper study center for works on paper at UMMA, we hope to encourage scholarship in prints, drawings, and photographs with the energy that is so vital," Ernestine Ruben says.

UMMA gifts total $2.5M

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