DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060029

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   56 lines

THE MORGAN FUND NEWSMAN MAKES NEWS A CHALLENGING GIFT: CHRYSLER MUSEUM TO RECEIVE $1 MILLION IF IT CAN RAISE $1 MILLION.

For decades Perry Morgan covered the news. But he made news today with two gifts to The Chrysler Museum of Art totaling $1.25 million.

It's a great story, as Morgan the newsman would be the first to notice if he were on the reporting end of it. The gifts make Morgan the museum's second largest benefactor after Walter P. Chrysler Jr. himself.

It's also a very American story. Perry Morgan, the retired publisher of this newspaper, longtime op-ed columnist and our esteemed colleague, came from the straitened circumstances of a Depression-era boyhood in the South.

Education was the key to a career that brought him professional fulfillment and personal success. His life illustrates the adage that fortune favors the prepared mind.

And now he is doing what the fortunate so often do in our prosperous and generous society. He is passing on some of his good fortune in a way that will help prepare and enrich other minds for years to come.

Morgan has established The Bunny and Perry Morgan Fund for Special Exhibitions at the Chrysler Museum. The gift began with the realization that special exhibitions - such as this year's shows featuring works by Rembrandt and Toulouse-Lautrec - act as magnets, spur attendance and introduce new visitors to the satisfactions and challenges of art.

But the Chrysler has lacked the ability to mount such crowd-pleasing shows regularly because funding for them has been catch as catch can.

No longer. The Bunny and Perry Morgan Fund establishes a $1 million endowment, the proceeds of which will help the museum to bring special exhibitions to Hampton Roads year in and year out. Since a major exhibit can cost $100,000 to mount, such a fund is obviously essential.

In a second gift of $250,000, Morgan has set up an endowment to fund an annual Family Weekend at the Chrysler, allowing the museum to open free of charge one Saturday and Sunday. Once again, the goal is to make the arts accessible. Too often, Morgan believes, museums are seen as remote institutions for the elite. Yet the art they contain can speak to everyone, every day. The recent Lautrec fest that brought a record 2,700 to the Chrysler on a Sunday is an obvious model.

We said this is a great story, but there's one catch. Even the catch is a good story. Morgan wanted to use his gift to encourage similar giving by others. So the $1 million endowment for special exhibitions is a challenge gift. It is contingent on the museum's raising a second $1 million to match it from community donors.

It is hard to imagine a worthier cause. The Southern poet and critic, Randall Jarrell, once said: ``Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because it is life itself.'' By helping to match Perry Morgan's gift, donors can help the Chrysler Museum bring art to many more lives. Donors should call Chrysler director Bill Hennessey at 664-6231.

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