Leon Levy Foundation
 |
|
| Founded | 2004 |
|---|---|
| Type |
Non-operating private foundation (IRS exemption status): 501(c)(3) |
| Focus | Ancient World, Arts and Humanities, Nature and Gardens, Neuroscience Research, Human Rights, Jewish Culture |
| Location | |
|
Area served
|
Mostly New York City |
|
Key people
|
Trustee – Shelby White, Trustee – Elizabeth B. Moynihan, Trustee – John W. Bernstein, President - Robert F. Goldrich |
| Endowment | Grants |
| Website | LeonLevyFoundation.org |
The Leon Levy Foundation, based in New York, is a private philanthropic foundation, created in 2004 from the estate of Leon Levy, a financier who died in 2003 aged 77.
The Leon Levy Foundation’s mission is to continue Leon Levy’s philanthropic legacy, encouraging and supporting development in six areas: understanding the ancient world; Arts and Humanities; preservation of nature and gardens; neuroscience research; human rights; and Jewish culture.
In 2006, the Foundation pledged $200 million to New York University for the creation of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW), which is housed in a building located at 15 East 84th Street, New York, NY 10028. ISAW is a PhD graduate program and a center for post-doctoral researchers. ISAW focuses on the study of the economic, religious, political and cultural connections between and among ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean basin, and across central Asia to the Pacific Ocean. Its approach is multi-disciplinary, concerning anthropology, archaeology, geography, geology, history, economics, sociology, art history, and the history of science and technology.
Roger Bagnall, a classics professor and former Graduate School dean at Columbia University, became the first director in 2007. ISAW has nine full-time faculty members. Since its founding, ISAW has given fellowships to more than 50 Visiting Research Scholars. ISAW also organizes scholarly exhibitions, which are open to the public free of charge and are visual manifestations of its scholarly programs. They have included Wine, Worship, and Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani; The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000 – 3500 BC; Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics; Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa; and Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos. ISAW also has a lecture program which is open to the public, and sponsors online archeological publications.
Other large Leon Levy Foundation grants in ancient world studies include the establishment of the Philip J. King Professorship at Harvard University to endow a chair with an interdisciplinary approach to studying the civilizations of the ancient world; continued funding of the excavation of the Leon Levy Expedition to the seaport of Ashkelon, one of the five ancient Philistine cities in Israel; and the Shelby White – Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications, which supports the publication of research on terminated and unpublished archaeological field work from significant sites in the Aegean, Anatolia, Balkans, Iranian Plateau, Levant, Mesopotamia and China.
...
Wikipedia