The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) has received a $20m gift from the Philadelphia-based philanthropists Lois G. and Julian A. Brodsky. The money will be used to establish an education centre that aims to strengthen the museum’s engagement with the region’s students, children and families.
The design for the forthcoming Lois G. and Julian A. Brodsky Learning and Engagement Center will be unveiled next year by the Philadelphia-based architecture firm MGA Partners, which spearheaded the redesign of the museum’s 4,000-sq.-ft auditorium in 2017. The Brodsky Center will occupy the PMA’s north wing and span around 19,000 sq. ft, featuring multi-purpose spaces and art studios.
“One of the main considerations guiding the design process is to transform the north wing of the museum into a dedicated, dynamic education hub that expands the museum’s capacity for creative learning and civic engagement,” Daniel Weiss, the museum’s director, tells The Art Newspaper. “It will be an intentional, purpose-built space that ignites limitless educational experiences grounded in the PMA’s extraordinary collection.”
The museum currently offers free admission for those aged 18 and under. It welcomes around 36,000 students each year from both Philadelphia schools and those of neighbouring cities and states. The Brodsky Center will focus on building connections between younger visitors and their families—particularly people from underserved communities—with the museum’s encyclopedic holdings, spanning approximately 245,000 works of art.
Philadelphia Museum of Art Courtesy PMA
“We hope the centre breaks down barriers and builds relationships through the open-design approach, and that it will provide space to gather, host students, hold community-driven dialogue, develop teen and multi-generational programmes, and nurture partnerships that strengthen Philadelphia’s cultural life,” Weiss says. “One of the ways we will measure reach is by listening to our visitors to determine who we are missing, who is not coming and where we need to extend our invitation so that we have every neighbourhood represented.”
The Brodsky Center is the first major capital project since the PMA’s $233m renovation and expansion, designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 2021. The project reimagined around 90,000 sq. ft of the museum and added 20,000 sq. ft of galleries and public spaces.
The Brodskys each have decades-long relationships with the PMA. Lois joined as a volunteer in 1982, was a weekday guide from 1986 to 2019 and currently serves on the committee for conservation, European art, prints, drawings and photographs. Julian—a co-founder of the telecommunications conglomerate Comcast Corporation—joined the PMA board in 1995, became a trustee emeritus in 2024 and currently serves as the vice chair of the museum’s library and archives committee.
The couple have made other significant contributions to the PMA, including funding exhibitions and installations—such as the reinstallation of the 19th-century European painting galleries in 2019. In 2009, they participated in a matching campaign to establish permanent endowments for curatorial and other museum staff. The Brodskys also contributed substantially to the museum’s 125th-anniversary campaign, which raised $250m in 2005 and saw the Constantin Brancusi gallery renamed the Lois Green Brodsky Gallery.
