Annenberg Foundation

A visibly moved Leonore Annenberg accepted the 86th annual Philadelphia Award last night from a close friend, Gov. Rendell. "I'm truly, truly overwhelmed," Annenberg, 89, said in the Academy of Music ballroom, for which a $5.3 million renovation grant was given by the Annenberg Foundation last year. "I'm sure you can see how touched I am. " The Philadelphia Award, one of the region's highest honors, was established in 1921 by Edward W. Bok, publisher of Ladies' Home Journal and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Precious few Philadelphians, let alone Americans, have lived on the grand scale of the Hon. Leonore Annenberg, with Cezanne-filled estates on either coast, where she hosted presidents and princes, and with a gold-embossed Gulfstream jet to shuttle back and forth. And precious few Philadelphians, let alone Americans, have left a mark on one region as she has, in partnership with her late husband, Walter H. Annenberg, former publisher of The Inquirer and TV Guide and U.S. ambassador to Britain under President Richard Nixon.

She has long been a quiet but steadfast supporter of Philadelphia organizations and institutions, championing and funding causes that range from the arts to education to health care. But it may have been philanthropist Leonore Annenberg's dedication last year to keeping Thomas Eakins' venerated painting The Gross Clinic in the city that garnered her the 2006 Philadelphia Award. As president of the philanthropic Annenberg Foundation, she led a number of civic initiatives in 2006 that greatly enhanced the vitality of Philadelphia's rich cultural and educational assets, according to Happy Craven Fernandez, chair of the Philadelphia Award and president of the Moore College of Art and Design.

Episcopal Academy is nearly two-thirds of the way toward reaching the $90 million goal of a capital campaign that will help underwrite the costs of building the school's new campus in Newtown Square. Officials said yesterday that the private school has raised $57 million. Money from the capital campaign, as well as proceeds from the sale of Episcopal's existing campuses in Merion and Devon, will pay the $212 million cost of creating the 123-acre campus in Delaware County. Episcopal, which was founded in 1785, enrolls 1,100 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.

The National Constitution Center, seeking to expand its influence and visibility across the country, has received a $6.4 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation to establish a sheaf of new journalism and education programs. The grant, to be distributed over five years, is the largest programming award the center has received since its initial capital drive, according to Richard Stengel, its president and chief executive officer. "This grant will support all the programming that we wanted to do and truly makes us national," Stengel said in an interview prior to a press conference yesterday.

The Philadelphia Orchestra could return to the Academy of Music to perform fully staged opera, add family concerts on Sundays - when the orchestra normally does not work - and develop interdisciplinary festivals with other arts groups under an agreement with the Annenberg Foundation for a $50 million pledge from Leonore Annenberg. The details are part of a contract between Annenberg and the orchestra announced in September, though neither party revealed these and other details at the time.

P.S.: Here's $15 million more. Hot on the heels of pledging $50 million to the endowment of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leonore Annenberg is committing $15 million to the Academy of Music, which is owned by the orchestra. The gift from the Annenberg Foundation is for the Academy's endowment, to be placed there in perpetuity, generating income each year for capital improvements to the 147-year-old landmark at Broad and Locust Streets. "What this really does is to make sure that the building is preserved," said Harold A. Sorgenti, the departing president of the Academy.

Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood announced yesterday that it would break ground tomorrow on a medical education center paid for, in part, with a $10 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation of St. Davids. Construction of the three-story education center - to be named the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Conference Center for Medical Education - will cost $11.2 million. More than half that, $6.5 million, comes from the Annenberg grant with the remainder from the hospital and its foundation and a $500,000 grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Walter H. Annenberg left half a fortune reputedly worth $4 billion to his wife, Leonore. The other half he bequeathed to his Annenberg Foundation in St. Davids. He left his impressionist paintings to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was good to his grandchildren. And he did not forget those who worked for him. Those details were revealed yesterday as the billionaire publisher's 41-page will and an 11-page codicil were filed with the Montgomery County Register of Wills Office.

A local nonprofit organization that aims to improve the lives of children and families has received a $7.8 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation to fund a five-year educational reform project. "The focus will be to build two things," said Linda Gotlieb, director of operations for Foundations Inc. "Not only the educating of children, but also on social and emotional growth. Building such characteristics as honesty, trust and character. " The grant will pay for a five- year effort between Foundations, which has offices in Philadelphia and New Jersey, and the Developmental Studies Center of Oakland, Calif.