When she was a child growing up in Brooklyn, Shelby White says her mother urged her to become a teacher.
“She thought that was a good profession for a young woman,” White says.
But though she didn”™t take that advice, White has become an educator in the fullest sense of the word, bringing the story of the past into the present through such projects as the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in Manhattan, which she founded in 2005. The modest, self-effacing philanthropist prefers, however, to keep the focus on the gifts, not the giver.
“I think the projects are interesting,” says White, who has a home in Westchester County. “I don”™t think the fact that I”™m doing them is interesting.”
Indeed, though vibrant in conversation, she is clearly enraptured as she takes the reporter and some officials who”™ve stopped by from the neighboring Metropolitan Museum of Art through the Institute”™s “Before Pythagorus: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics,” on view through Dec. 17. The exhibit celebrates the sophistication that the ancient city of Babylon (in modern-day Iraq) brought to bear on mathematics approximately 1,000 years before the Greek Pythagorus was credited with the theorem that bears his name.
But “Before Pythagorus” isn”™t only about mathematical formulas worked out on clay tablets inscribed with right-angle triangles and the densely textured writing system known as cuneiform. It”™s also about Otto E. Neugebauer (1899-1990), an Austrian-born historian of math and science who helped unlock the tablets”™ secrets and fled the Nazis to found the History of Mathematics Department at Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he spent most of his career.
In one small exhibit, the viewer leaps from circa 1900 B.C. to A.D mid-1900s.
Shows like “Before Pythagorus” are in a sense calling cards for the work of the Institute, in which select doctoral students explore the ancient world in context, amid the stately wood-paneled trappings of a townhouse that once belonged to publisher Ogden Reid.
“We wanted to train scholars using a broader base,” she says.
To that end, White sought to establish a PhD program allied with a major university. She chose New York University, whose Institute of Fine Arts ”“ also on the upper East Side ”“ she admires.
White”™s passion for both philanthropy and the ancient world were born respectively of an immigrant Jewish family ”“ to whom giving was important ”“ and an early job making documentaries on ancient art for high schools. But it is fair to say that this passion was cemented by another love ”“ for her husband, the late hedge fund pioneer Leon Levy, who joined Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. in 1951 when it was poised to take flight and later co-founded Odyssey Partners.
The Leon Levy Foundation has funded myriad projects and programs embracing neuroscience, public gardens and biography. But its heart lies in antiquity, with the foundation providing some $200 million to establish the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and funding the excavation and restoration of a seven-panel mosaic depicting animal life and dating from 300. Three of the panels are on view in “The Roman Mosaic From Lod, Israel,” at The Met through April 3. (The exhibit is right off the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, a sun-drenched chessboard of the Greco-Roman past.)
“Leon loved reading ancient history,” says White, who recalls Robert Caro, the brilliant biographer of President Lyndon B. Johnson, visiting their home and peppering Levy with questions about what the Roman senators might”™ve thought of various issues.
Together she and Levy went on archaeological digs, collected antiquities and trekked the narrative of the past. One such jaunt took them to modern-day Turkey in search of the Granicus River and the site of the first of four pitch battles Alexander the Great would wage in his conquest of the Persian Empire. Another trip found them traveling along the Greek coast until they came upon the Bay of Actium, where Cleopatra and Marc Antony wagered an empire and their lives in a losing battle against the future Roman emperor Augustus.
“We looked out over the bay at that point where Cleopatra turned her ship around to sail back to Egypt,” White remembers. “It was a wonderful moment.”
That White is a Cleopatra buff should come as no surprise: Both women share a gift for connecting the cultural dots. Far from being the vixen of history and Hollywood, Cleopatra was a shrewd ruler and a fabulously educated polyglot, the first of the Ptolemies ”“ the Greco-Macedonian dynasty that ruled Egypt for some 300 years after Alexander the Great ”“ to immerse herself in Egyptian culture. White says she is pleased to see the Queen of the Nile get her due in an acclaimed new biography by Stacy Schiff, who delivered the first lecture at the Leon Levy Center for Biography.
A strong woman, White is fascinated by other strong women, including Zenobia, the third-century Syrian queen who led a revolt against the Roman Empire, and the Roman empress Julia Domna, who, it was said, “was known more for her beauty than her virtue.”
Says White with a smile: “I always thought that was a wonderful thing.”
