Leon and Debra Black Give 48 Million to Dartmouth for Arts Center

Private equity titan Leon Black and his wife Debra have donated $48 million to Dartmouth College for a new visual arts center.

Designed by Machado and Silvetti, whose projects include the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif., and scheduled to open in September 2012, the 105,000-square-foot facility will house the Ivy-League New Hampshire college's studio art, film and digital humanities departments. It will include galleries, classrooms, offices and studios.

Along with the capital gift comes a site-specific Ellsworth Kelly wall sculpture also commissioned by the Blacks.

Leon Black, a 1973 alum, founded in 1990 the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which today has $100 billion in assets under management. He serves on the boards of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Asia Society. His net worth is $3.4 billion, according to Forbes. He's also a collector of old masters and Impressionists.

Debra Black is chair of the board of directors of the Melanoma Research Alliance, which she co-founded with her husband. Also a Broadway producer, she serves on the boards of Lincoln Center Theater, The New York State Council on the Arts and Rockefeller University.