Hamilton College has announced a $6 million bequest from alumnus Daniel W. Dietrich II ('64) to establish two funds in support of arts programming at the upstate New York school.

The Daniel W. Dietrich '64 Fund for Innovation in the Arts will award grants to faculty in the arts and curators at the college's Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art in support of collaboration, innovation, exploration, and risk taking. The awards will be known as "Dietrich inchworm grants," in reference to a favorite quote of Dietrich's by the painter Albert P. Ryder: "Have you ever seen an inchworm crawl up a leaf or twig, and, then, clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something to reach? That's like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have a footing."

A second endowment, the Daniel W. Dietrich '64 Arts Museum Programming Fund, will be used to by the museum to secure commitments from visiting artists and engage faculty, students, and local schools and organizations in integrating planned exhibitions into curricular and co-curricular activities. The college also will receive twenty-four works of art from Dietrich's collection as well as funds for their stewardship.

Dietrich, who died last year, was an art history major at Hamilton, a member of the Wellin Museum's architectural committee, and served on the school's Committee on the Visual Arts, Performing Arts Advisory Committee, and Trustee Subcommittee for Arts Facilities Planning. He also bequeathed more than fifty works of American art and an endowment gift of $10 million to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

"The Dietrich Arts Museum Programming Fund will allow for experimentation and risk in art-making at the Wellin Museum of Art," said museum director Tracy Adler. "This grant supports the spirit and power of creativity by providing game-changing funding for the museum's programming. It also allows for advanced planning, which is crucial to the museum's ability to commission site-specific works from visiting artists and to better integrate exhibitions into the Hamilton curriculum."