Philanthropy
In the 1880s, she became a major benefactor and director of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association and the first president of the Century Club of California. She was a major benefactor of the University of California, Berkeley and its first woman Regent, serving on the board from 1897 until her death. Also in 1897, she contributed to the establishment of the National Congress of Mothers, which evolved eventually into the National Parent-Teacher Association. In 1900, she co-founded the National Cathedral School in Washington, DC. A public elementary school near the National Cathedral School bears her name.
In 1901, Phoebe Hearst founded the University of California Lowie Museum of Anthropology, renamed Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in 1992, in celebration of the museum's ninth decade. The original collection was founded with about 230,000 objects representing cultures and civilizations throughout history.
The museum now contains about 3.8 million objects. Throughout her lifetime, and as denoted in her will, Phoebe Hearst donated over 60,000 objects to the Museum. She also funded expeditions by anthropologists and archaeologists to study and collect objects. Most notable are the 1899 expeditions in Egypt by George A. Reisner and in Peru by archaeologist Max Uhle. These expeditions, among others, produced numerous, well-documented objects now in the museum's collection. This includes approximately 20,000 ancient Egyptian artifacts, the largest Egyptian collection west of Chicago. Phoebe also realized the importance of such a museum in preserving Native Californian culture, which was rapidly disappearing at the hands of white settlers. With support from Phoebe Hearst, anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber and his students, including Robert F. Heizer, documented Native Californian culture in the form of photographs, audio recordings, texts, and artifacts. This research produced about 250,000 Native Californian artifacts, the most extensive in the world. The museum collection is available to students and researchers for examination. A gallery located on the University of California Berkeley campus is available for public view.
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Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)