The Logan gift will, at last, provide the University with an arts center truly worthy of our students and our faculty. As an alumnus of the College and the Law School David, along with his wife Reva, understand the profound importance of the creative and performing arts to students in the College and in the professional schools and graduate divisions as well. The Logan Center will be a democratic building, a building of beauty and dignity, and a building that conveys by its openness and quiet authority that it is a perfect symbol of a great educational institution in a great metropolis.

—John W. Boyer, Dean of the College

Making History

On May 3, 2007, the University of Chicago made a historic announcement: David and Reva Logan and their sons and grandchildren had generously committed a $35 million gift to support the University’s Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. Not only was this one of the largest single donor gifts to the University, it is also believed to be both the single largest cash gift to the arts in the city of Chicago and one of the largest gifts to support a university arts building in the United States.

“The Logan family sees the center not as a building project,” said David Logan, “but as a way to improve the quality of life for students and faculty of the University, as  well as the community.”

A Philanthropic Family

David Logan was a 1939 graduate of the College and a 1941 graduate of the Law School. Reva Logan also attended the College and is a former teacher. The Logans are long time supporters of the arts and have a wide range of philanthropic interests—they have given generously to support education, health, social change and poverty reduction—but the lifelong Chicago residents have had a particular passion for the arts.

Logan served on the Illinois Arts Council for 29 years and chaired the Council’s Arts in Education panel during its first several years. An internationally renowned collector of photography and artist-illustrated books, David Logan received the Governor’s (Illinois) Special Recognition Award for Distinguished Service in the Arts and Education. In previous years, the Logans had provided generous grants in support of numerous arts projects, including New Writing in Photography, the Chicago Arts Partnership for Education, Ken Burns’ Jazz, and Duke University’s Jazz Loft Project. The couple also funded the Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and endowed a faculty position in investigative journalism at the University of California Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. David Logan was also a leader in Chicago’s alumni community.