Paul Mellon 1907-1999

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By Newsweek Editors

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THE RICH, WROTE F. SCOTT Fitzgerald, ""are different from you and me.'' But Paul Mellon was different from the rest of the rich. Without fuss or fanfare, he used his enormous fortune to nurture the art, the landscape, even the taste of the nation. In the course of a long life--he died last week at 91--he gave away close to $1 billion (more if reckoned in 1999 dollars). He hugely strengthened the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., founded by his father, Andrew Mellon, with gifts of an astounding 913 works of art plus one of the architectural triumphs of the late 20th century, I. M. Pei's trapezoidal East Building. He built the Yale Center for British Art, donating the centerpieces of its collection and erecting an extraordinary building to house it, designed by Louis Kahn. The annual Bollingen Prize for Poetry was his creation. Great chunks of precious seashore on Cape Hatteras and Cape Cod and an entire state park in Virginia were secured for the public by Mellon money. Only rarely did he allow his name to be attached to projects he sponsored, but there is little danger that it will be forgotten. He embodied an entrepreneurial tradition of personal philanthropy that is peculiarly American, and he leaves a land dotted with monuments to the use of private means for public good.

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