The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History is set to be launched on Wednesday at the University of Texas at Dallas. A $17 million gift from Dallas philanthropist Edith O'Donnell helped found the center for art history training and research. State-of-the-art technology and tools will be a focus in the program which is a collaboration with the Dallas Museum of Art.

Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building will house the center in a 155,000-square-foot facility for programs in visual arts, emerging media technology and multimedia communications.

“UT-Dallas excels in science and engineering. The moment is right to build a program of the same quality and rigor in art history,” O’Donnell said. “There is a natural affinity between science and the arts."

The first director of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, Dr. Richard R. Brettell, said, "With art historians on campus who study the intersections between art and cartography, art and biology, and art history in the context of big data, UT-Dallas has demonstrated a willingness to think about art and about history in new ways.”

The center will also collaborate with The Institute of Fine Arts in New York, The Courtauld Institute of Art History in London, The Zentralinstitut fur Kunstgeschichte in Munich, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, D.C.