UNC-Chapel Hill art museum receives $25 million gift

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) – Officials at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say its Ackland Art Museum has received its largest gift ever.

A statement from the school’s news bureau says alumnus Sheldon Peck and his wife Leena made a donation valued at $25 million. The commitment includes an $8 million endowment to support a new curator and future acquisitions and an art gift of 134 primarily 17th-century European masterworks, valued at $17 million, including seven works by Rembrandt van Rijn.

With the gift, the Ackland becomes the first public university art museum in the U.S. to own a collection of drawings by Rembrandt and only the second university art museum in the nation to do so.

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