
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, January 14, 1994                   TAG: 9401140256
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: WENDI GIBSON RICHERT STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MUSEUM RECEIVES $237,800

Thanks to a year-end endowment, the Art Museum of Western Virginia is almost a quarter of a million dollars richer - and "growing richer by the minute," said Executive Director Ruth Appelhof.

The $237,800 endowment is the largest single contribution ever received by the Roanoke museum. Its second-largest donation was $40,000, also received last year.

The contribution was given to the museum by a family that wishes to remain anonymous. However, their identity will become public when a new gallery housing the family's collection opens on the museum's second floor. It will be named after the family.

Though the gallery opening is possibly years away, Appelhof is elated by the prospect.

"It's just going to mean so much here," she said. "The purpose of the museum will finally become a reality."

The money, now earning interest, will be used to help develop and conserve the museum's collection and to install the family's collection of paintings, ivories, beaded handbags by Judith Lieber and several pieces of Steuben handblown lead crystal. The collection will be given to the museum, though Appelhof does not know when the museum will acquire it.

The donation comes at a time when arts organizations are struggling to hold onto state and federal funding. The museum, for instance, is asking for $150,000 for each year in the state's biennial budget; Gov. Douglas Wilder has proposed $65,000 for the museum for only one of those years.

Nevertheless, Appelhof sees the contribution as a sign that things finally are looking up for the arts. Personal donations to the museum in 1993 were up 20 percent and attendance up 23 percent over 1992.

"People are being much more generous, looking outside their own interests into the community's," she said. "I hope it is the beginning of a series of significant gifts that will come to all the cultural organizations."

Susan Gring, president of the board of directors for the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge, said the gift to the museum is "marvelous," and that the museum is "on a real roll."

However, she doesn't see the financial tide changing for the arts community.

"I think contributions to the cultural community are maxed out," she said.

"I think people are going to be very judicious about where they donate their dollars. . . . They will donate to what they find meaningful."

Jere Hodgin, executive and artistic director of Mill Mountain Theatre, which shares space in Center in the Square with the art museum and other cultural organizations, said he "couldn't be more pleased for them."

"It seems to me [that the donation is] the first wave of the level and the kind of support that the community needs to turn back in" to help arts organizations in the valley sustain their growth, he said.

Asked if he thinks the museum's endowment might be a turning point for arts funding, Hodgin said it is an "excellent signal."

by CNB