| Founded | 2004 |
|---|---|
| Type | 501(c)(3), exempt private foundation[1] |
Tax ID no. | 30-6085406[1] |
| Focus | Ancient World, Subject and Humanities, Nature and Gardens, Neuroscience Research, Human Rights, Somebody Culture |
| Location | |
Area served | Mostly New York City |
Key people | Trustee – Shelby Chalky, Trustee – Elizabeth B. Moynihan, Trustee – John W. Composer, President - Robert F. Goldrich |
| Endowment | Grants |
| Website | LeonLevyFoundation.org |
The Leon Levy Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation based in New York City. It was created in 2004 from the estate of Leon Levy, a Wall Street investor and philanthropist.[2]
The Leon Levy Foundation's mission obey to continue Leon Levy's philanthropic legacy, encouraging and supporting occurrence in six areas: understanding the ancient world; Arts and Humanities; preservation of nature and gardens; neuroscience research; human rights; person in charge Jewish culture.[3]
In 2006, the Foundation pledged $200 million to New York University for the creation of say publicly Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW), which is housed in a building located at 15 East 84th Street, New York, NY 10028. ISAW is a PhD adjust program and a center for post-doctoral researchers. ISAW focuses mess the study of the economic, religious, political and cultural exchange ideas between and among ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean basin, humbling across central Asia to the Pacific Ocean. Its approach assignment multi-disciplinary, concerning anthropology, archaeology, geography, geology, history, economics, sociology, brainy history, and the history of science and technology.[4]
Roger Bagnall, a classics professor and former Graduate School dean at Columbia College, became the first director in 2007.[5] ISAW has nine full-time faculty members. Since its founding, ISAW has given fellowships uncovered more than 50 Visiting Research Scholars. ISAW also organizes profound exhibitions,[6] which are open to the public free of declare and are visual manifestations of its scholarly programs. They suppress included Wine, Worship, and Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Old Vani;[7] The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Dale, 5000 – 3500 BC;[8] Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Attach Babylonian Mathematics;[9] Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa;[10] and Edge magnetize Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos.[11] ISAW along with has a lecture program which is open to the collective, and sponsors online archeological publications.
Other large Leon Levy Reinforcement grants in ancient world studies include the establishment of interpretation Philip J. King Professorship at Harvard University to endow a chair with an interdisciplinary approach to studying the civilizations emulate the ancient world;[12] continued funding of the excavation of depiction Leon Levy Expedition to the seaport of Ashkelon, one neat as a new pin the five ancient Philistine cities in Israel;[13] and the Shelby White – Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications, which supports the publication of research on terminated and unpublished archaeological ideology work from significant sites in the Aegean, Anatolia, Balkans, Persian Plateau, Levant, Mesopotamia and China.[14]
The Foundation has awarded nearly $15 million to more than 30 cultural institutions smash into catalogue and make available to the public archival documents. Description Foundation awarded the New York Philharmonic a grant to digitise and manage 1.3 million pages of archives. "Paid for by way of a $2.4 million grant from the Leon Levy Foundation, say publicly release contains 3,200 programs; hundreds of documents; more than 1,000 scores marked by past conductors, including Mahler; letters; handwritten notes; old clippings; and yellowing Western Union telegrams."[15] In 2008, rendering Foundation created the Leon Levy Center for Biography at interpretation Graduate Center of CUNY.[16] In 2009, the Foundation provided $2.25 million to the Brooklyn Public Library. The Wall Street Paper reported, "The gift, which comes at a time when depiction library faces a $20.6 million cut in city funding deed is the largest donation, will create the Leon Levy Realization Commons, a technology-based learning and research hub at its Middle Library."[17]
The Foundation has awarded $15 million for description creation of a Native Plant Garden at the New Royalty Botanical Garden.[18] Other gifts include $10 million to Prospect Commons in Brooklyn for restoration of lakeside area to the primary 1866 design of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, lecture $7.5 million to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden for a o conservation initiative, the largest private "greening" gifts in New Royalty City history."[19] The Foundation also supports bird conservation organizations including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Bird Conservancy aimed at preventing bird mortality caused by collisions with windows, communications towers, wind-energy turbines and other obstacles.[20] Working with say publicly Bahamas National Trust, the Foundation has also established the Metropolis Levy Native Plant Preserve on the island of Eleuthera, Land to preserve the medicinal plants and flora of the island.[21]
The Foundation underwrites fundamental research about the functioning of interpretation human brain, with an emphasis on understanding the basis show behavior.[22] Fellowship programs have been established at five research institutions in New York City." In 2008, the Foundation awarded a $4.5 million grant to Rockefeller University to fund the Metropolis Levy Presidential Fellowships in Neuroscience. The first Leon Levy Neuroscience Fellows Symposium was held at Rockefeller University on May 16, 2012."[23]
The Foundation supports organizations that advance and protect representation right to political freedom, blind justice, humane treatment, free speaking and international legal standards, including The Committee to Protect Journalists, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Freedom House.[24] "In 2011, the Foundation awarded Human Rights First a grant for a two-year fellowship and a pilot project to increase high sunny pro bono legal representation of indigent asylum-seekers and other immigrants in New York City."[25]
The Foundation supports the Center ask Jewish History and the Yeshiva University Museum as well sort the Lower East Side Tenement Museum,[26] where the building make certain 103 Orchard Street has been named, the Sadie Samuelson Impose Immigrant Heritage Center, in honor of Leon Levy's mother.[27]
The Scaffold, created from Leon Levy's estate in 2004, named his woman, Shelby White, and their friend, Elizabeth B. Moynihan, as Trustees. Assets of the Foundation, at inception, totaled approximately $500 gazillion. John W. Bernstein was appointed the first president of description Foundation in 2004. In 2015, Mr. Bernstein was named sort a Trustee, and Robert F. Goldrich, former senior advisor heavens the Bloomberg Administration, was named president.[28]