Shelby White

Shelby White (born 1938) is an American investor, art collector, and philanthropist. She serves on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Early life Shelby Ann Baier was born in 1938 and grew up in Brooklyn. She received a bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College and a master's from Columbia University.

Career White began her career as an author and financial journalist and wrote for publications including Forbes, Town and Country and The New York Times. In 1992, White published the book What Every Woman Should Know About Her Husband’s Money. Her March 1978 article, “The Office Pass,” in Across the Board magazine was among the first on the topic of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Over the next several decades, White and Levy accumulated a substantial collection of objects from different time periods and international origins. Many of the pieces in their collection are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She also serves on the Director's Roundable at the Morgan Library & Museum.

In the early 1990s, White and Levy agreed to send 16 artifacts to the British Museum upon their deaths, after having been shown evidence that the objects may have been surreptitiously removed from Roman ruins in Icklingham, England. In 2008, White returned 9 pieces that the Italian government suggested had been questionably exported.

The Levy-White collection has been scrutinized for looted objects: in a 2000 article, archaeologists David Gill and Christopher Chippindale stated that 93 percent of the works at the exhibition Glories of the Past: Ancient Art from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection had no known provenance.

Upon search warrants issued by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office on 28 June 2021, and April 27, 2022, objects were seized from White's Manhattan home and were returned to Turkey and Italy, these objects constituting "evidence of criminal possession of stolen property in the first, second, third, and fourth degrees, as well as of a conspiracy to commit those crimes" In 2021 and 2022, investigators from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office returned 71 artifacts from the Levy-White collection to multiple countries, including Yemen, Turkey and Italy. and Yemen.

In May 2023, Chinese antiquities loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Shelby White were seized and returned to the Chinese Consulate, and an alabaster bull looted from Uruk was returned to Iraq. In March, Bragg's office “thank(ed) Shelby White for her assistance and cooperation with our investigation.”

In 1995, White and her husband made a donation of $20 million for the renovation and expansion of the Met's Greek and Roman Galleries; the Met's largest cash donation up to that time. Philippe de Montebello, the Met's director, said the gift “moves us significantly toward finally making the broad spectrum of our Greek and Roman holdings accessible to all visitors.”

In 2000, White was controversially appointed to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, a government organization formed in 1983 to help combat illicit international trade of antiquities.

In 2017, White received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, a private philanthropic award established in 2001. thumb