The Foundation is committed to fostering a truly interdisciplinary and cross-cultural academic understanding of the civilizations of the ancient world. It will sponsor a diverse range of scholarship, exhibitions, and publications in ancient world studies. The most significant efforts in this area are:

Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University

© Selldorf Architects

The Foundation's largest and most innovative effort, ISAW will serve as a center for advanced scholarly research and graduate education, intended to cultivate cross-cultural study of the ancient world, from the western Mediterranean to China. Announced in 2006, this $200 million initiative will admit its first graduate students in the fall of 2008. The inspiration for the Institute stemmed from Leon Levy's lifelong passion for archaeological study, antiquity and antiquities. Dr. Roger Bagnall, a renowned scholar whose appointment as the first director of the Institute was announced in April, 2007, assumed his post in July and has begun assembling a staff and organizing its programs.

For a decade, the White-Levy Publications program has enabled hundreds of archaeologists to publish their field research, making vast resources of archaeological information available to the archaeological scholarly community. In conjunction with the White-Levy Publication program, the Foundation in 2006 established the Philip J. King Professorship at Harvard; it will support an outstanding scholar of the ancient world with a cross-cultural academic focus.

Leon Levy and Shelby White Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

© Metropolitan Museum of Art

A spectacular "museum-within-the-museum" for the display of its extraordinary collection of Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian, and Roman art - much of it unseen in New York for generations - opened  at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 20, 2007. After more than five years of construction, the New Greek and Roman Galleries are the result of a 15-year project that completely redesigned and reinstalled the Museum's superb collection of classical art.

The new galleries, which were widely acclaimed by critics, returned to public view thousands of long-stored works from the Metropolitan's collection, which is considered one of the finest in the world. The centerpiece of the New Greek and Roman Galleries is the majestic Leon Levy and Shelby White Court - a monumental, peristyle court for the display of Hellenistic and Roman art, with a soaring two-story atrium.

Leon Levy Foundation Conservation Project at the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston
The Foundation is providing for the treatment of 45 of the MFA's Late Archaic and Early Classical ceramic vessels that are most in need of conservation. The treatment is scheduled to take place over three years. The project's goals include not only the stabilization of these vessels, but also the improvement of their appearance with the use of a comprehensive restoration strategy that takes into consideration the needs of art connoisseurs, academics and the general public.

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