Chris Bruce, the director for Washington State University’s museum of art, travels to Seattle in late February to help sort out the disposition of the one of the most significant art donations in Washington State history – that of Safeco Insurance’s gift of more than 800 artworks.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grants WSU $25 million to help construct the $35 million building that will become the centerpiece in the WSU School for Global Animal Health. This is the largest grant in the history of WSU.
The Golden Grads of 1945 donated a grand piano to WSU as a class gift. It was dedicated during a concert in the Rotunda of the Terrell Library.
The Boeing Company donated $7 million to WSU- the largest private gift to date.
In the ’91-’92 fiscal year, donors gifted WSU with a then-record $33 million in grants and gifts. This is up from the previous year’s record of $26 million, and it would in turn be topped the following year when that year’s gifts tallied $45 million.
In November of 1893, Board of Regents chair Charles R. Conner persuades the state and others to donate their exhibits from the Chicago World’s Fair to the fledgling Washington Agricultural College. In 1914, the museum is officially named after Conner. As the collection evolves in the following years it focuses on vertebrate mammals. Now housed in Abelson Hall, the Conner Museum displays 700 specimens, with more than 65,000 in its research library.
