(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Steven A. Cohen and his wife Alexandra gave $50 million to the Museum of Modern Art in New York for its capital campaign.
The unrestricted gift, made through the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, will support MoMA's expansion project that will add 50,000 square feet of gallery space -- a 30 percent increase -- when it's completed in 2019. Cohen, who joined the museum's board of trustees in 2016, is the latest billionaire to contribute to the $400 million expansion. David Geffen donated $100 million in 2016.
“Alex and I have always believed that the arts can, and should, enrich all people's lives,” Cohen, the founder of Point72 Asset Management, said in a statement from MoMA.
MoMA will create the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Special Exhibitions, its largest contiguous gallery where major shows are staged, on the sixth floor of the current building, the museum said in the statement.
“This gift will have an extraordinary impact on our ability to present exhibitions at a scale that is virtually unprecedented,” Glenn Lowry, MoMA's director, said in the statement.
Cohen, an avid art collector, recently spent more than $165 million on a Roy Lichtenstein painting, “Masterpiece,” in a private transaction.
To contact the reporter on this story: Katya Kazakina in New York at kkazakina@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Vincent Bielski
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