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Wednesday, November 20, 2002

By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

To mark its 75th anniversary, the Buhl Foundation is endowing the Carnegie Science Center director's position with a $3 million gift, the largest single award in the foundation's history.

The endowed chair should help attract a new director for the center, which will lose its current head in late December. Seddon Bennington announced last month that he had accepted a position as director of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum in his native New Zealand.

The unprecedented Buhl award had been planned before Bennington's resignation, said foundation president Doreen Boyce.

"We had hoped he would be in that chair."

As it happens, "the timing is excellent," Boyce said, because the gift will be "an added incentive for someone of really top qualifications. It's always nice to have a chair."

The award highlights the importance of finding a highly qualified director at a critical time, with the center's $90 million expansion now in design. The director's position also is crucial in building financial support for the project.

Boyce said the foundation, established in the will of North Side businessman Henry Buhl in 1927, wanted to mark its anniversary "in some way that connects us with our past but also with our future. We thought it was just a superb way to make a statement about how important we think science education is."

The future of Pittsburgh, Boyce said, "depends so much on young people embracing science and technology. We think it's significant to even the economic future of the city."