This Upstart Museum Now Has a Met-Sized Endowment

Industrialist Mitchell Rales’s gift to his Glenstone Foundation in Maryland is one of the largest-ever to the arts.

The Pavilions building at Glenstone.

Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP
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Billionaire Mitchell Rales gave $1.9 billion to his Glenstone Foundation, one of the largest-ever gifts to the arts.

The donation, disclosed in Glenstone’s 2021 tax return, brings the foundation's net assets to $4.6 billion — nearly the same as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The funds support a Maryland sculpture park and museum that Rales and his wife Emily founded in 2006 — and where they have their personal residence to this day.