Dan and Carole Kamin have a long history with Carnegie Museums, but their relationship with Carnegie Science Center Director Jason Brown began a little over five years ago at a garden party.
It was May 2019, and Carole’s famous tulips were in bloom. Brown, who had recently been named as the Science Center’s director, was honored to have been invited as a guest to the Kamins’ annual tulip party. Brown had spoken with Carole before but had never met Dan.
When the two men were introduced, Dan—who built his career in commercial real estate—wasn’t interested in talking about flowers.
“When he heard that I ran the Science Center, he said, ‘If I wasn’t a real estate guy, I could have been an astronomer,’” Brown recalls. “He said, ‘I still have these two questions that I’ve never had answered: What exists just outside the boundary of the universe, and what existed one millisecond before the Big Bang?”
Brown admitted that he didn’t have the answers. But the conversation signaled something about Dan’s deep curiosity in science, which he traces back to when he was a boy exploring the Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science, the precursor to Carnegie Science Center. He would cite that history again when, five years after that conversation with Brown, the Kamins announced a $65 million gift to the Science Center, the largest in Carnegie Museums’ history.
After that first meeting at the tulip party, Brown stayed in touch with the Kamins, inviting them to the reopening of The Buhl in 2020 following a multimillion-dollar renovation, and also sharing with them an ambitious vision that was taking shape for the Science Center’s long-term future on the North Shore.
Photo: Christina MontemurroThe Kamins have been patrons and supporters of Carnegie Museums for decades. In 2016, a $5 million commitment from the Kamins permanently endowed the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s director position, now held by Gretchen Baker, who is the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Director of the museum. The following year, they were inaugurated into the Carnegie Nobel Quartet Society, which recognizes lifetime giving to Carnegie Museums that exceeds $1 million. Carole also is an emeritus member of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History Advisory Board and a longtime member of Carnegie Museum of Art’s Women’s Committee.
The couple’s support of Carnegie Science Center—which is being renamed the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Science Center in their honor—not only stems from Dan’s lifelong love of science, but also from his confidence in the vision that Brown and his leadership team crafted for the institution.
“The Science Center is a vital contributor to the economic vitality of the Pittsburgh region and a great partner to our schools and science-based businesses,” Dan says. “Carole and I were inspired by the future vision presented by the Science Center’s leadership, and we felt compelled to support it in a meaningful way.”
At the core, it is a vision for deepening engagement with boundary-pushing science and connecting it with the larger Pittsburgh community. It is about inspiring visitors—young and old—to ask the complicated questions like those that Dan put to Brown at that tulip party, and perhaps also pursue the answers.
“Giving young minds the opportunities to explore and wonder what else is out there, just as I did, creates a lifetime of memories,” he says.
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