The Metropolitan Museum of Art has received a $23 million donation from newly elected trustee Jennifer Rubio and her husband Stewart Butterfield, made through the Rubio Butterfield Foundation. The principal gift will endow the museum's undergraduate and graduate internship program in perpetuity, which will be renamed after the couple starting September 2026. An additional donation supports the Met's new Tang Wing for modern and contemporary art, set to open in 2030.
This donation matters because it addresses a critical barrier to entry in the museum field—unpaid or low-paid internships that often exclude talented individuals without financial means. By permanently funding the internship program, Rubio and Butterfield aim to make the Met's pathway more equitable. The gift also signals the growing influence of a new generation of philanthropists who combine tech wealth with serious art collecting, as Rubio is also the youngest trustee at the Whitney Museum of American Art and co-funds its Free Friday Nights program.