MECA receives $3 million gift from Lunder family to support financial aid
Photo / Tim Greenway
Laura Freid, Maine College of Art president, announced this week that the college has received a $3 million gift from the Peter and Paula Lunder family through its charitable organization, the Lunder Foundation.
Maine College of Art in Portland received a gift of $3 million from the Peter and Paula Lunder family through its charitable organization, the Lunder Foundation.
The Lunder family has been a longtime supporter of MECA, as well as Colby College, Peter Lunder’s alma mater and the recipient of the Lunder Collection, a troved valued at more than $100 million. They also created the Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby. The Lunders have also been active at the Portland Museum of Art.
Peter Lunder, who was born in 1933, was a partner at the Dexter Shoe Co. in Dexter. He and his wife split time between homes in Boston and Florida.
At MECA, the gift includes $2.5 million in funding for the Lunder Scholars program, which provides need-based aid to undergraduate students from Maine, and $500,000 for ongoing operations as the college prepares for a strategic planning process. Both aspects of the gift are in the form of a challenge match, which, if met by MECA’s fundraising, will result in a total of $5 million being raised for additional student financial aid, and $1 million being raised for ongoing operations.
“We are truly grateful to Peter and Paula Lunder for this visionary gift,” MECA President Laura Freid said in the release. “I hope their dedication to MECA’s future and to our ambitious goal of meeting the financial need of talented students of all socioeconomic backgrounds will inspire matching funds from MECA donors near and far.”
“We are pleased to support MECA’s efforts to make higher education accessible to students regardless of their financial situation through this new gift to the Lunder Scholars fund,” Peter Lunder said in the release. “Offering opportunity to a wide spectrum of students who bring both academic and artistic strengths and diverse cultural perspectives is central to our mission.”
In 2002, the Lunder Foundation established the Lunder Scholars with an initial gift of $500,000 as part of an endowment challenge. That challenge helped the college raise more than $3 million as part of its last campaign, including a second commitment of $500,000 from the Lunders. The Lunder Scholars program has supported more than 100 MECA undergraduates.
MECA aims to be affordable to students of all income levels, according to the release. To achieve that goal, MECA provides 100% of its bachelor of fine arts degree students with some type of financial assistance. More than $7 million is given to students annually in the form of scholarships, grants, loans and job opportunities.
The gift is the largest financial aid gift in the school's history, Maine Public reported. Freid told Maine Public the gift will benefit not only the school but also Portland as a whole, because about half of MECA’s students stay in Maine, thus benefiting the city’s culture and vitality.
Freid became MECA’s 18th president in July 2017, with a vision of teaching artists how to be “cultural entrepreneurs.” At the time of her appointment, she cited MECA and Portland as "an exciting American center for the arts, culture and entrepreneurship." In an interview earlier this year, she told Mainebiz her priorities for MECA included enhancing community connections.
Peter and Paula Lunder said in an interview, recorded in October 2017 by the painter and educator James McElhinney, that much of their interest in art grew out of visits to the Colby Museum, which was near where they lived when Mr. Lunder was with Dexter Shoe. They’d seek out art knowledge from the museum’s longtime director, Hugh Gourley. They talked about Maine’s rich history of art and artists.
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