Ingrid Flick, the billionaire widow of German industrialist Friedrich Karl Flick has given a major donation to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The donation was given on behalf of the German Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and will serve to complete the organization’s gallery within the museum’s new addition and fund its exhibition program for the next three years. In an email to artnet News the organization would only confirm that the donation was of a “very substantial amount,” citing their policy, “to not disclose any figures about any kind of donations.”
Flick inherited a reported €4 billion ($5.5 billion) from her husband when he passed away in 2006. He had inherited the company, Friedrich Flick Industrial Holdings (Industrieverwaltung), which was long criticized for its involvement with the Nazi regime when his father died in 1972. His father was tried for war crimes for his ties to the Third Reich.
Aside from building and acquisition costs, Ingrid Flick’s donation will be used for acquisitions and for a cross-cultural exchange of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian children called “The Art Road to Peace.”