The Most Famous People in the PatronView Database

PatronView tracks more than 1.1 million people who have given to museums, libraries, and cultural institutions across the country. Almost all of them are private citizens nobody outside their own city has heard of, which is sort of the point of the database. But buried in there are a few dozen names everyone would recognize.

To find them, I needed a way to measure fame that didn’t involve me guessing. So I sorted the full patron list by something concrete: how many language editions of Wikipedia cover a person, a number Wikidata tracks as “sitelinks.” George W. Bush’s page exists in 279 languages, more than anyone else in our database. Steven Spielberg is at 170. A working ballet dancer or a Nobel chemist can land in the same range as a movie star, which is part of what makes the list fun.

Before publishing any of this, an agent audit went through the matches one by one, checking each person’s PatronView bio and board record against Wikipedia and Wikidata, and confirming birth years, occupations, and institutional ties actually line up. That process is explained in full at the bottom. For now, the good stuff:

• Steven Spielberg has given to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 27 times since 2006.
• George W. Bush has given to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum seven times since 2012.
• David Rockefeller’s record includes 450 gifts across 31 institutions, more than anyone else on this list by a wide margin.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s giving is concentrated almost entirely in Washington, DC, at places like the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Phillips Collection.
• Ethan Hawke, Tina Fey, and Zadie Smith have all served as trustees at institutions they also give to.

A note on what these numbers mean before you read them: everything below is a count of documented gifts and the years they span, pulled straight from public annual reports, IRS 990 filings, and donor walls. None of it is a dollar total. PatronView doesn’t have that for most of these people, and I’m not going to guess.

🏛️ Politics and Government

George W. Bush, the 43rd president, was in office during the September 11 attacks. His giving reflects it: seven gifts to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum between 2012 and 2024, plus two gifts to the Smithsonian Institution in 2015.

John McCain flew Navy jets, survived more than five years as a prisoner of war, and represented Arizona in the Senate for three decades. Every one of his eight recorded gifts, spanning 2008 to 2018, went to the Intrepid Museum, the retired aircraft carrier turned naval museum docked in Manhattan.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg served on the Supreme Court from 1993 until her death in 2020. Thirty of her 31 recorded gifts run through the institutions of the city she worked in: 15 gifts to the Phillips Collection, four each to the Folger Shakespeare Library and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, four to the National Constitution Center, and three to the Capital Jewish Museum. The lone exception is a single gift to the Metropolitan Opera in 2020.

Rudolph W. Giuliani was mayor of New York City during 9/11. His record is the busiest of any politician on this list: 46 gifts across eight institutions, including 19 to the Prostate Cancer Foundation, ten to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and eight to God’s Love We Deliver.

Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor from 2011 to 2021, has 30 recorded gifts across six institutions, led by 12 to the New York Public Library and seven to Gibney Dance.

🎬 Film and Television

Steven Spielberg directed Jaws, E.T., and Schindler’s List, and founded the USC Shoah Foundation to record Holocaust survivor testimony after making the latter. His giving traces that history directly: 27 gifts to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum since 2006, plus 14 gifts to the National WWII Museum since 2009. His full record runs to 47 gifts across six institutions.

Woody Allen, the filmmaker behind Annie Hall and Manhattan, has given to exactly one place in our database: the Museum of Modern Art, 14 times between 2008 and 2024.

George Lucas created Star Wars and Indiana Jones. His most frequent museum beneficiary is a surprise: eight gifts between 2010 and 2018 to the Museum of the Rockies, the Montana natural history museum famous for its dinosaur fossils. He’s also given four times to the Smithsonian and twice to MoMA.

Wes Anderson was born and raised in Houston, and his giving splits between his adopted city and his hometown. He’s given to Carnegie Hall 18 times since 2004 and the New York Public Library ten times, but he’s also given four times to the Rothko Chapel, the meditation space in Houston built around Mark Rothko’s paintings.

Sigourney Weaver, best known for the Alien films, has served on the board of the New York Botanic Garden and given there four times between 2017 and 2022, alongside two gifts to God’s Love We Deliver.

Alec Baldwin has 23 recorded gifts, mostly split between the New York Philharmonic, where he’s given 14 times and has served as a board director, and the Roundabout Theater Company, where he’s also held a director seat. He’s served on a third board too, at Guild Hall in East Hampton.

Ethan Hawke has given to the New York Public Library 28 times since 2000, more than any other actor on this list, and served as a trustee there from 2016 to 2022.

Sarah Jessica Parker has a smaller giving footprint, five gifts across four institutions, but a notable board seat: she’s served as vice chair of the New York City Ballet.

😂 Comedy and Talk

Joan Rivers was a board director at God’s Love We Deliver, the New York charity that delivers meals to people with serious illnesses, and gave there 21 times between 2003 and 2016.

Jon Stewart, the former Daily Show host who became one of the loudest advocates for 9/11 first responders, has given to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum six times since 2012 and served as a trustee there from 2020 to 2024.

Billy Crystal has also served on the board of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, with six gifts there, and has given seven times to God’s Love We Deliver.

Tina Fey has given to the American Museum of Natural History eight times between 2011 and 2017 and served as a trustee there from 2013 to 2023.

📚 Literature

Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist behind Beloved, gave to the New York Public Library 27 times between 2000 and 2017.

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and author of Night, served as a council member at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he gave 13 times between 2006 and 2015. He also gave twice to the New York Public Library.

Philip Roth, born and raised in Newark, gave four times to the Newark Public Library between 2007 and 2012, the city that named a branch after him.

Zadie Smith, the novelist and NYU professor, has given to the New York Public Library nine times since 2016 and served as a trustee there from 2020 to 2022.

🔬 Science and Nobel Laureates

Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who proposed the existence of the quark, gave to the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque eight times between 2009 and 2017, not far from the Santa Fe Institute he co-founded.

Walter Gilbert, a Harvard biologist and Nobel laureate in chemistry, has the deepest record of any scientist on this list: 40 gifts across six institutions, 30 of them to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston between 2009 and 2024.

Roald Hoffmann, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1981, gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art 13 times between 2007 and 2019.

Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate who later served as president of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, gave there six times between 2007 and 2012, part of a 19-gift record spanning five institutions.

💼 Business and Philanthropy

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, and his giving leans toward flight and space: five gifts to the Smithsonian Institution between 2021 and 2023, two more specifically to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and two to Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft and gave across an unusually wide spread of causes, 19 gifts total across 11 institutions, from eight gifts to the Pacific Northwest Ballet to two gifts to the National Gallery of Art.

David Rockefeller, longtime chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and grandson of John D. Rockefeller, has the single largest giving record of anyone on this list: 450 gifts across 31 institutions. Ninety-seven of those went to the Museum of Modern Art, where he served as honorary chairman, and 51 to the New York Public Library.

Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and New York’s mayor from 2002 to 2013, has 44 recorded gifts across 12 institutions. Eleven went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and ten to the New York Public Library. He also sits on the boards of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, where he’s given five times, and the Bronx Zoo.

🎨 Arts, Architecture, and Music

Frank Gehry designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. He has served as a board director at LA Phil, the orchestra that performs in the hall he built, and gave there in 2025. He’s also given nine times to the Museum of Modern Art and 12 times to the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

Anna Wintour, the longtime Vogue editor, appears in our board records as an elective trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year from 2013 through 2024. She’s given there 23 times between 2003 and 2023.

Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet dancer and choreographer, has given to the New York Public Library nine times, plus a separate gift specifically to its Jerome Robbins Dance Division, a fitting match for his career.

Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, has given to the New York Philharmonic 14 times since 2009 and has served as a board director there.

📰 Journalism and Media

Barbara Walters, the broadcast journalist behind 20/20 and The View, gave ten times to the Metropolitan Museum of Art between 2007 and 2016 and seven times to the Intrepid Museum.

Fareed Zakaria, the CNN host and Washington Post columnist, has a smaller but distinctly downtown Manhattan record: four gifts to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and one to the Public Theater.

Methodology

Fame here means one specific thing: how many language editions of Wikipedia cover a person, a count pulled from Wikidata. It rewards people who are well known globally, not just in the United States, which is why a Nobel physicist can outrank an American senator. It’s a useful, honest proxy, not a final word on who matters.

Fame is one way to rank the database. Dollars are another: see our launch of the Top 100 Museum Donors ranking for the donors who have given the most.

Every name and Wikipedia link in this piece was checked by an agent audit before publishing, matching each person’s PatronView bio, board records, and giving pattern against Wikipedia and Wikidata for birth years, occupations, and known biographical details. A few names in our top tier turned out to be the same person recorded twice under slightly different name formats, most often “Mr. Michael Bloomberg” and “Michael R. Bloomberg.” In those cases we combined the records and linked to the stronger one.

Thanks for reading. If you spot an error or want to suggest someone we missed, email me at hello@nickgray.net or find me on LinkedIn.