David Owsley, former Muncie resident and long time contributor to the University recently made a donation of $5 million, along with 90 percent of his extensive collection of arts, to the Ball State Museum of Art.
The Museum of Art's Committee and other Museum grant donors are honoring Owsley's recent grant by naming it after him.
The committee hosted an event Thursday in honor of David Owsley at the Museum of Arts. The event celebrated his life as a passionate lover for the arts and a long time fundraiser for the museum over the past 40 years.
Owsley was honored for his work to enlarge the museum as a result of a successful fundraising campaign.
"Mr. Owsley has certainly enriched our world with his many contributions that fill this museum," President Jo Ann Gora said in a statement. "His dedication to this museum, our campus and higher education in general is proof of his commitment that so many members of the Ball family have shown to the museum in its more than 75 years of existence."
Owsley is the grandson of Frank C. Ball, one of the five Ball brothers. Ball was very supportive in the construction of the museum in the 1930s.
The museum exhibition space will expand to 25,000 square feet, about 50 percent more gallery space than it currently occupies.
The expansion will allow the museum to showcase more of its collection of nearly 11,000 works. The museum will occupy the entire second floor of the Fine Arts Building, adding four new galleries expected to open in 2013.
"We are most certainly gifted with this generous donation from Mr. Owsley, along with his life long donations of grants and priceless works of art as well," Peter Blume, director of the Museum of Arts.
Blume said the donations are not only a way for the museum to grow, but it gives students interested in arts a wider selection. The donation is also a great way for students to really get a better perspective into the vast amounts of culture, both past and present, in the world we live in.
"With Mr. Owsley's 2,300 works of art already here on display at Ball State University, along with his contributions over the past four decades and now this recent grant, we are certainly honored and thankful for it," Blume said.
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