Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Houston's Museum of Fine Arts was the top recipient of private donations among U.S. arts organizations in 2006, with a total of $185.8 million, according to a survey by the Chronicle of Philanthropy released today.

New York's Museum of Modern Art was No. 2 in the survey, with $133.5 million raised. In 2005, MoMA received $239.2 million from private donors, including a $100 million gift from philanthropist David Rockefeller.

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington ranked third with $131.2 million raised, followed by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts with $130.4 million; the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center with $114.8 million; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art with $108.9 million.

Overall, private support for arts institutions, including libraries, museums and public broadcasting, rose 17.5 percent from 2005 to $2.5 billion. By comparison, U.S. educational institutions, a leading magnet for private philanthropy, saw an 11.3 percent increase in private donations to $17.6 billion. The Chronicle survey covers 400 of the largest U.S.-based nonprofit institutions, and the year under study is fiscal 2006, for which the ending date varies among those surveyed.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the world's largest arts-and-entertainment complex, led all U.S. performing-arts organizations with $120.97 million in private donations in 2006, a 156.8 percent rise over the $47.1 million it reported the previous year.

`Sweet Spot'

Reynold Levy, Lincoln Center's president, has emerged as a major arts fundraiser as he has aggressively sought donations for the $1 billion renovation of the organization's 16-acre campus on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Levy has drawn donations from wealthy Wall Street executives such as Bruce Kovner, chairman of the hedge fund Caxton Associates LLC, and David M. Rubenstein, the Carlyle Group's managing director. Both are Lincoln Center board members.

``The effort here is to find the sweet spot between the donor's interests and Lincoln Center's needs,'' Levy said in an interview at Bloomberg News headquarters this month. ``If you can find that spot, then you've created a bond, and that bond can grow enormously.''

Lincoln Center was followed by the Metropolitan Opera with $113.6 million in 2006, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the U.S. with $68.96 million, the San Francisco Symphony with $63.5 million and the San Francisco Opera Association with $60.8 million.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ranked sixth on the list with $52.4 million in 2006, followed by the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California with $51.2 million, and the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta with $46.5 million.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@Bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 29, 2007 11:45 EDT