After her husband’s death, White foundation In his name, he has made large donations to the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, the Lincoln Center, and others. In 2006 she donated her $200 million to New York University Ancient World Institutewhich operates out of a townhouse her foundation purchased near the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 2017, White received the highest ratings. Awarded Carnegie Medal of Charity. The quote reads, “The multifaceted breadth of her giving is ever-evolving.”
But despite the reputation she and her husband built for being generous, their collection drew criticism.
White and Levy began amassing an extensive collection of over 700 antiquities in the 1970s. At the time, to curb looting, countries began adopting guidelines banning trade in goods with no history of ownership dating back to at least 1970. However, quite some time passed before museums, dealers and private collectors fully embraced the new concept. And White and Levi, like many others, embraced objects of limited provenance.
In early 1993, the couple agreed to surrender 16 items they claimed had been looted from ancient Roman sites in England. In 2008, White delivered 10 to Italy and 2 to Greece. Italian investigators have traced some of them to Giacomo Medici, an Italian who was indicted in 2004 for trafficking antiquities, and White and her husband later went on a string of murders. had purchased some of these same items from Robin Symes, a prominent English antiquarian who was involved in the Investigation of looted works of art.
One of the returned items was a vessel with a scene of Zeus and Hercules attributed to the 5th-century BC painter Eucalides, a very famous piece of antiquity. This work was part of the “Glories of the Past” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1990.
“It’s amazing that so many pieces from that exhibition are now back in Italy, Greece, Turkey, etc.,” said David Gill, an archaeologist and research fellow at the University of Kent Heritage Centre, UK. says.
