Seattle University receives $300 million art collection

Seattle University is making plans for a new art museum, thanks to a $300 million art collection donation and $25 million in seed money from a donor, university officials announced Wednesday.

The donation — by Richard Hedreen, a real estate developer — is the largest donation in the history of the university, a Jesuit institution founded in 1891, the trustees said in a statement.

Hedreen donates his entire collection, which includes more than 200 works of art from the 15th century to the present, including art by Thomas Gainsborough, Lucian Freud and Amy Sherald.

“It’s a remarkable collection of education,” the university’s president, Eduardo Peñalver, said in a telephone interview, adding that “we look forward to having that on our campus and that our faculty, our students can have that across the curriculum to use. stimulating their own learning process and discussion.”

Hedreen said in a statement that he donated the collection in honor of his wife, Betty, who was a Seattle University alumna and served on the board of trustees of the Seattle Art Museum. She died in 2022.

“I am convinced that a Jesuit university, which focuses on education and visual arts, poetry, literature, history and education, is the right place for a museum that can teach art history,” Hedreen said in a telephone interview.

The new museum will be open to students and the public, Peñalver said, adding that it would be “a bridge between our campus and the city.”

Edgar Gonzalez, the vice president for university advancement, wrote in an email that the university has already begun discussions with an architect regarding the planned museum and that the project would take approximately three to five years to complete. “The seed funding will allow us to move forward with the project immediately,” Gonzalez wrote.