Teresa Heinz Kerry, the Pittsburgh philanthropist who supported the founding of the Andy Warhol Museum, surprised its director, staff and donors last night with a gift of $4 million to the endowment that helps fortify Pittsburgh's lively, provocative hub of contemporary art and popular culture.

Teresa Heinz Kerry

The gift, the third largest in the museum's history, was approved three days ago through a special mail ballot sent to the dozen directors of the Howard Heinz Endowment so it could be announced ahead of the foundation's normal grant-making in May.

Heinz Kerry's announcement was made last night at a Spike-a-Delic Gala, dinner and dance party held at the South Side Works, a new development created by Warhol board member Damian Soffer.

She said that the museum's founders had hoped it to "add to Pittsburgh's stature as a center for the arts" and it has succeeded in accomplishing that goal.

The donation will boost the Andy Warhol Museum's endowment to $7.1 million. The Warhol is one of four museums run by the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

A jubilant Christine Olson, chair of the museum's board of trustees, told Heinz Kerry that "we will match, if not exceed, the gift you have made tonight."

Before it opened with a memorable weekend of nearly nonstop festivities in May 1994, the Warhol received a total of $5 million from the Vira Heinz Endowment and the Howard Heinz Endowment. At that time, the fund-raising goal was $35 million.

Heinz Kerry chairs the Howard Heinz Endowment and sits on the board of the Vira Heinz Endowment. She is also a trustee of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Staff members of the Howard Heinz Endowment believe the museum has raised the city's international and artistic profile by stretching the traditional bounds of programming, according to a statement issued by the endowment's spokesmen, Doug Root and Grant Oliphant.

In 2001, the Andy Warhol Museum opened an exhibition titled "Without Sanctuary," a series of horrific photographs that showed lynchings of blacks in the United States.

In the endowment's prepared statement, Heinz Kerry praised Tom Sokolowski, the Warhol's director, for bringing the exhibition to Pittsburgh.

"What made that exhibit so successful was all the work Tom Sokolowski and the museum staff put into community outreach and education," Heinz Kerry said.

" ... People left not just provoked or saddened, but also more thoughtful, and perhaps even wiser. That is the hallmark of a great institution, and of great art."

The museum began celebrating its 10th anniversary last year and concludes its festivities next month. Last month, the Seventh Street Bridge was renamed the Andy Warhol Bridge.

Innovative approaches to programming are more of a reason to celebrate than longevity, she noted.

"Any museum can hang around long enough to accumulate and celebrate anniversaries. But the first 10 years of this museum have been years of playfulness and experimentation. I think Andy would have been proud," Heinz Kerry said.

The museum's founders, Heinz Kerry said, envisioned a place that would be much more than a static monument to the life and work of pop art's creative, cagey crown prince.

"It was also meant to provide a distinctive lens on contemporary life -- to look at our ever-changing world and see it as Andy might have seen it, in bright colors and startling, sometimes mischievous insights. That has been the magic of this museum. It has taken on subjects and exhibits that more conventional institutions would never dare to," Heinz Kerry said.

More recently, the museum displayed the now infamous photographs taken of inmates who were abused at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Warhol died in 1987. A year later, board members of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh determined to build a museum here and began negotiating to acquire 200 of Warhol's works from the Dia Foundation in New York City.

Maxwell King, president of the Howard and Vira Heinz Endowments, said this latest gift is fresh validation of the Heinz family's commitment, "going back to the months after Andy Warhol's death when Teresa and Sen. John Heinz were convinced that a museum would become a national treasure."

In 2003, the Heinz Endowment gave $4 million to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to jump-start its effort to raise $23 million for a new permanent exhibit called "Dinosaurs in Their World."

The gift to the Warhol brings to $8 million the total amount the Heinz Endowment has given to the capital campaign of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Sokolowski said last night that the $4 million gift is "a great birthday present for a 10-year-old museum and a 55-year-old director.

"It made the evening all the more perfect."