Smithsonian Receives Gift of $60 Million

Aviation businessman Steven F. Udvar-Hazy is giving the Smithsonian Institution its largest donation ever--$60 million--for a new air and space exhibit facility at Dulles International Airport near Washington.

The money will be used to kick off a $230-million fund-raising campaign for the facility in suburban Virginia, museum officials said.

“This gift is so extraordinary that the museum will announce the start of its capital campaign almost nine months earlier than we had planned,” said Kim Riddle, a spokeswoman for the Smithsonian.

Udvar-Hazy is president and chief operating officer of International Lease Finance Co., a Century City-based subsidiary of American International Group, a multinational insurance holding company. It leases commercial jetliners to airlines in the United States and overseas.

The company, which Udvar-Hazy co-founded about 25 years ago, leases about 400 planes with a total value of more than $18 billion, a company spokeswoman said.

She said Udvar-Hazy, who “likes to keep a low profile,” was out of the country on business and not available for comment.

The federal government has already set aside land for the new center on the airport grounds, about 30 miles west of the nation’s capital. The Smithsonian’s collection of aviation and space hardware is so large that only about 10% of it will fit in the institution’s cavernous National Air and Space Museum on the mall in downtown Washington, currently the most visited museum in the capital.

Udvar-Hazy’s donation will be formally announced next Thursday in Washington.

The gift honors the late Navy Adm. Donald Engen, who served as director of the National Air and Space Museum until his death this summer in a glider crash.

The largest previous donation to the Smithsonian came from another California resident, developer Kenneth E. Behring. an avid hunter and outdoors enthusiast, who provided $20 million to upgrade the National Museum of Natural History’s mammal exhibits.