IU’s School of Art, Architecture + Design has been renamed after a $20 million donation from Indianapolis philanthropists Sidney and Lois Eskenazi.
The donation to the newly-named Sidney and Lois Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design comes three years after the Eskenazis gave $15 million to name the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art in 2016.
"We are immensely grateful to Sidney and Lois Eskenazi for this generous and transformative gift," said the school's dean Peg Faimon in a press release. "Having the Eskenazi name on the school will elevate in an extraordinary way the role of art and design on campus, in the state and in the nation."
Part of the gift will be used to establish scholarships, such as the Lois Eskenazi Scholarship for incoming freshmen interested in painting as well as a “Fund for Excellence” to support fellowships, visiting artists and scholars, research funding, equipment and other projects.
"Lois and I are extremely pleased to be making this legacy gift to Indiana University, the university where we both received our education,” Sidney Eskenazi saidin the release. “We are very honored that the university chose to name the school for us, and we are very pleased to know that it will serve many generations of Indiana students.”
The $20 million donation is included in “For All: The Indiana University Bicentennial Campaign,” an initiative aimed at raising $3 billion in honor of IU’s bicentennial.
“This gift will aim the arc of this school's trajectory directly toward the heavens,” provost Lauren Robel said in the release. “What a legacy of beauty and humanity it represents."
