Buddy herself—the MCA played an interesting role for her in sort of thinking about her next phase of life after her husband's death. It was relatively shortly after his death that the museum had started to even contemplate the plan to build a new building, and Buddy knew very clearly that she wanted to be a part of making that happen. And so it was really her gift that came out of a direct decision in closing her husband's estate and wanted to really contribute back in his name, that the Beatrice and Robert Mayer Education Center was created. But before it was even created, I mean, they gave a gift, it was the largest gift that the museum had ever received, to the plans in formation to build the current Kleihues building.

And it was because of their gift and because of Buddy Mayer's sort of foresight and generosity that the trustees at the time felt like, "Okay, we can do this. We can. People will give us money and we can build a building that may have a budget larger than what we've ever contemplated before."