Blake Nayland, Feeder (1998)

The Frances Young Tang Art Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College has received a substantial gift from software programmer and philanthropist Peter Norton.

The 75-piece donation—which includes works by Matthew Barney, Carrie Mae Weems, Kara Walker, and Polly Apfelbaum, among others—is taken from Norton’s personal collection and the first in a series of gifts to various colleges and universities around the country by the Silicon Valley-based magnate that are meant to “deepen the integration of the visual arts in higher education,” as per a statement.

As part of Norton’s second large donation project (he undertook his first in 2000), he will be making other similar donations to academic institutions around the country, among them the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, UCLA’s Hammer Museum, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. Norton’s gift is among a spate of recent major gifts made for renovations to university art museums, which have been in the news recently coinciding with the opening of the Harvard Art Museums this weekend. In making the gift, Norton joins other significant private collectors including Eli Broad and Leon Black who have made significant gifts to university art museums in the last two decades.

“These works will enrich the many audiences who come to the Tang, including the students who work with us, the faculty and classes who study here, and the artists and museum visitors from near and far,” said Tang director Ian Berry. He added, “We are excited to present these works for the Skidmore community and the public in new and unexpected ways.”