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IU’s Eskenazi art museum get gifts for new study, new name

(Provided Photo/Indiana University)

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (Inside INdiana Business) — The Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University received two major gifts this week.

A total of $6 million was donated to the museum to support its goal of engaging students and the public with original works of art. 

A couple known in Bloomington for being “champions of photographic art,” Martha and David Moore have gifted $1 million for a new study room of prints, drawings and photographs. The room will be named the Martha and David Moore Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Study.

The center will create a 1,500-square-foot gallery, the museum’s first space devoted to the exhibition of works on paper and compact storage, and an expanded study room.

The Martha and David Moore Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Study will be available to students, faculty, and the public upon request when the museum reopens Nov. 7.

Bloomington residents and entrepreneurs Kimberly and John Simpson have donated an estate gift of $5 million to the museum for a new center of education. In honor of the gift, the center will be named the Kimberly and John Simpson Center for Education. 

“The new Simpson Center for Education will play an essential role in providing IU students, other members of the IU community and the general public with unprecedented opportunities to interact with the Eskenazi Museum’s acclaimed art collections and other priceless artifacts,” said IU President Michael McRobbie in a statement. “We are deeply grateful for Kim’s and John’s extraordinary generosity in supporting this important new center and furthering the educational and engagement missions of one of the world’s premier university art museums.”

The center is one of several new spaces for learning and engagement that have been established as part of a major $30 million renovation of the Eskenazi Museum, which began in 2017. A grand reopening celebration is scheduled for next month.