Palm Beach Hedge Funder Ken Griffin Donates $5.5 Million

From Chicago Business by By

Dollars for dinos: The Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund has donated $5.5 million to Field Museum to create a new display on Antarctic dinosaurs. Field Museum announced the gift today.

The new Antarctic Dinosaurs exhibit will open at the museum in summer 2018 and run through January 2019. After that, it will travel to a handful of museums throughout North America. The Field Museum did not yet have an itinerary for the traveling show.

Griffin’s gift will underwrite the exhibit and its educational components, though not travel expenses.

Pete Makovicky, a Field Museum paleontologist, will curate the exhibit, which will show newly discovered dinosaur species, as well as century-old scientific specimens collected in Antarctica.

kg1The exhibit’s educational programming will include an immersive educational video game and a multimedia educator toolkit. Animated, 3-D objects and specimens will “invite the public to go back in time,” according to the release announcing the gift.

“We are delighted by Ken’s generous investment,” said Richard Lariviere, Field Museum CEO, in the release. “Over the past 15 years, Ken has been an invaluable partner in our mission to engage and educate the public, giving more than $10.5 million to the museum.”

In 2006, Griffin, CEO of Citadel, donated $5 million to open the Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet, an exhibit that shows dinosaurs’ roles in evolution and environmental change. In the release, Griffin called Chicago “incredibly fortunate to have a world-class institution like the Field Museum.”

Griffin is known for major gifts to arts nonprofits, including Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Modern Art in New York.