With the announcement of a new multi-million-dollar gift going to one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, the museums have hit a new milestone.
This past year marks the greatest total gifts to the museums from a benefactor since their founding by namesake Andrew Carnegie over 125 years ago.
On Wednesday, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History announced that it will receive $25 million from Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin, the philanthropist couple who in early 2024 announced a $65 million gift for the Carnegie Science Center. That brings the Kamins’ total gifts to the museums in one calendar year to $90 million.
Daniel Kamin is known for his role as the longtime head of Kamin Realty Group, which manages over 400 retail and commercial properties across the country. The Kamins also operate the Kamin Family Foundation, where they focus their philanthropic efforts on the Pittsburgh region. And in November 2024, the Kamins were presented with the Outstanding Philanthropists awardby The Western Pennsylvania Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals for their gift to the science center.
“Within our company, we’ve sort of restructured and discovered that we should set up a foundation, and that’s exactly what we did,” Carole Kamin said. “And three years ago, we would not have been thinking about this, these kinds of donations were not even in our thoughts. And so it’s just worked out that with a foundation, we’ve been able to plan ahead and be able to say we wanted to make some really transformational type of gifts that would make a difference.”
The $25 million gift to the natural history museum will be used to renovate one of its most well-known exhibits, currently known as “Dinosaurs in Their Time.” The exhibit, which first opened in 2007, features dozens of original fossils of dinosaurs from the Mesozoic Era, including the iconic Tyrannosaurus Rex holotype, the original skeleton upon which the species is based. According to the museum, with the Kamins’ gift, the exhibit will be renovated and modernized, emphasizing accessibility, hands-on learning opportunities, in-gallery storytelling and interactivity. According to the museums, renovations are slated to be completed in 2028. It will also be renamed to the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Hall of Dinosaurs.
“By the time we finish this reimagining of the hall, it will be its 20th anniversary,” Gretchen Baker, whose position as the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History was endowed by a $5 million gift from the Kamins in 2016, said. “In many ways, some of the exhibits will remain the same, like the dinosaur mounts will remain. Those all have held the test of scientific time since they were first installed, so there won’t be changes in some of the anchor pieces of the exhibition, but certainly we’ve learned a lot more about how visitors engage in a meaningful way with exhibitions and thinking about some of the new interpretation of new kinds of storytelling, certainly new media, new interactive elements, new lighting, just some of the technology aspects of the hall that we want to modernize and update and help to make the hall even more immersive.”
The decision to donate to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and specifically the dinosaur exhibit, was a personal one for Carole Kamin, who earlier in her career had spent 20 years working as a buyer for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Museum of Art’s stores, as well as serving on the board for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Museum Women’s Committee.
“Those were wonderful years,” Carole Kamin said about her time working for the museums. “I came there and had no background at all in dinosaurs, and all of a sudden, I was opened up to this wonderful world of these great creatures. I actually had dreams about these dinosaurs. … I was really just overly obsessed.”
Carole Kamin said that she hopes the renovations of the exhibit can allow it to reflect more recent research in the field of dinosaurs as well as programming to help foster interest in all ages.
“What we’ve done (with Dinosaurs in Their Time) is spectacular, but I believe we can add to that and be creative,” she said. “And out of this will come additional programming for children, and probably programming also for adults, because adults are still in love, such as myself, with learning more about what is happening in the world of dinosaurs.”
In addition to funding renovations of the dinosaur exhibit, a portion of the gift will also be used to fund an endowment to support the museum’s scientific research for “in perpetuity.”
“That’s the thing that is so special to me about this gift is that it really is helping to ensure that we will continue to do this really important work, doing these collections, looking for dinosaurs all over the world, that kind of exciting scientific activity,” Baker said.
The Kamins’ personal connections to the museums were also the driving force behind their gift to the science center, with Daniel Kamin sharing that his lifelong love of science and astronomy was fostered by childhood visits to what was then known as the Buhl Planetarium. Later this year, the Carnegie Science Center will be renamed the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Science Center in recognition of the gift, and the science center will be utilizing it to make significant improvements to not only the museum, but its North Shore footprint.
“It’s great that both of these gifts are going to institutions in Pittsburgh because I think in addition to the Kamins’ very strong commitment to the museums, they’re very keenly interested in supporting the Pittsburgh community as well,” Steven Knapp, president and CEO of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, said. “And I think they’re emerging as one of the main philanthropic families in a long tradition of philanthropy, going all the way back to Andrew Carnegie himself and some of his friends and colleagues, who in a certain sense, launched the American tradition of philanthropy back in Pittsburgh at the turn of the previous century. And that tradition is one that the Kamins are very much sustaining.”