Her name is ubiquitous in public spaces around Los Angeles: the Wallis Annenberg Building at the California Science Center in Exposition Park, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, the soon-to-debut Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills.
Then there’s the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica and Wallis Annenberg GenSpace in Koreatown.
Wallis Annenberg, a deep-pocketed philanthropist who helped transform the city through massive donations to arts, education and animal welfare causes, died Monday morning at her home in Los Angeles from complications related to lung cancer, the family said. She was 85.
The heiress to Walter Annenberg’s publishing empire served, for the last 16 years, as chairwoman of the board, president and chief executive of the influential Annenberg Foundation, which her father started in 1989 after selling TV Guide and other publications to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. A representative said the nonprofit organization has assets of about $1.2 billion.
Annenberg, who worked for TV Guide when her father owned Triangle Publications, stepped in as the foundation’s vice president after he died in 2002. When her stepmother, Leonore, died seven years later, Annenberg took the helm, broadening its philanthropic scope beyond media, arts and education to include animal welfare, environmental conservation and healthcare. Since she joined the foundation, it has given about $1.5 billion to thousands of organizations and nonprofits in Los Angeles County.
Wallis Annenberg worked with her father, Walter Annenberg, when his company published TV Guide.
(Annenberg Foundation)
Annenberg was fiercely passionate about funding the arts, with an eye toward making culture accessible to all. She founded the free Annenberg Space for Photography, which opened its Century City doors in 2009. (It closed during the pandemic in 2020, but archival material is still online.) The space showed exhibitions spanning the world of hip-hop, the global refugee crisis and war photography, among other subjects. Annenberg was also a longtime board member of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. She gave $10 million in 2002 to endow LACMA’s director’s position.
LACMA Chief Executive Michael Govan, who came to the museum in 2006 to fill that endowed position, praised Annenberg’s philanthropy.
“Wallis Annenberg blessed the Los Angeles community not only with her philanthropy, but also with her guidance about how to improve our community,” Govan said in a statement to The Times, ”from public access to our beautiful beaches to the livelihood of local animals, and the importance of the arts to our daily lives.”
Under her leadership, the foundation made $38.5 million in low-interest loans for the construction of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The Zoltan Pali-designed center opened in 2013 in a renovated, 1933 Beverly Hills Post Office and has since become a major cultural hub in the heart of Beverly Hills, infusing the tony neighborhood with vibrant music, theater and dance. Broadway star Patti LuPone, comedian Sarah Silverman and the Martha Graham Dance Company have all graced the stage at the Wallis; the center also offers robust educational programming.
When it opened, fellow philanthropist Eli Broad called the center “a great addition” to Los Angeles and “another jewel in the region’s cultural crown.”
Annenberg cared deeply about equity in education. Walter Annenberg had founded the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in 1971, and before that the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. But Wallis Annenberg, a USC board of directors life trustee, helped to steer the school’s vision and guide it into the future. She gave $50 million in 2011 to have the Wallis Annenberg Hall built, which nearly doubled the communication and journalism school’s footprint when it opened in 2014. More recently, in March, Annenberg gave $5 million to the university for a high-tech, multimedia production studio to be built on USC’s Capital Campus in Washington, D.C. It’s scheduled to open in August.
Exposition Park got a boost in 2004, when the Wallis Annenberg Building at the California Science Center opened, a project made possible with a $25-million challenge grant from Annenberg. The former armory, redesigned by Pritzker-winning architect Thom Mayne, now has classrooms and laboratories for Science Center educational programming. Annenberg has also funded exhibitions there, including the 2019 interactive exhibit “Dogs! A Science Tail,” which explores the deep bond between humans and canines. It went back on view in May.
In 2004, she also stepped in to help underwrite the Annenberg Community Beach House, located on the grounds of the former Marion Davies estate, after hearing the city of Santa Monica might engage private developers to restore the site, which had been operated as a private club for 30 years. The seaside public space is free and features a playground, gallery and volleyball courts, among other amenities.
Construction crews began the process of placing the first layers of soil over the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing on March 31.
(Al Seib / For The Times)
Annenberg was a ferocious animal lover. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing — the world’s largest urban wildlife crossing, which stretches across 10 lanes of the 101 Freeway between the Simi Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains in Agoura Hills — was made possible with a $1-million challenge grant from Annenberg in 2016 followed by $25 million in 2021. When it’s completed, the crossing will help animals such as mountain lions, deer and bobcats pass safely over the freeway. The first layers of soil were laid on the overpass in March. Plans call for its completion in 2026.
“I imagine a future for all the wildlife in our area,” Annenberg said in a statement published by The Times in March, “where it’s possible to survive and thrive and the placement of this first soil on the bridge means another step closer to reality.”
Annenberg also created a Silicon Beach-based animal shelter, the Wallis Annenberg PetSpace, which opened in 2017 and helps to rehabilitate so-called “unadoptable” animals before finding them new homes. PetSpace has a medical facility and offers animal adoptions as well as classes to teach people to how to better care for their pets.
In recent years, Annenberg had been thinking about quality of life for older adults.
In 2022, Annenberg opened the Wallis Annenberg GenSpace, a senior center in Koreatown offering visitors a place to pursue new interests and find community through classes that include belly dancing, horticultural therapy and financial literacy. It also hosts concerts, dances and game nights.
After the Palisades and Eaton wildfires earlier this year, the Annenberg Foundation funded short-term and long-term recovery efforts, gifting nonprofits and organizations that included the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation and the Team Rubicon Response Fund.
Wallis Huberta Annenberg was born in the affluent Main Line area of Philadelphia and grew up, from age 10, in Washington, D.C. Her mother was Bernice Veronica Dunkelman, who went by Ronny. Annenberg had a younger brother, Roger, who died in 1962 when he was 22. She graduated from Pine Manor Junior College in Wellesley, Mass., and attended one year of college at Columbia University before dropping out to get married to neurosurgeon Seth Weingarten. The couple divorced in 1975.
Prior to their divorce, Annenberg had moved to Los Angeles with Weingarten and her children in the early ‘70s. Annenberg was drawn to the city’s energy, creativity and diversity.
Despite her public profile, Annenberg was known to be press shy. The billionaire philanthropist was particularly family-oriented and enjoyed evenings at home with her children and grandchildren. She was also an avid sports fan and loved watching football on TV, martini in hand.
Wallis Annenberg, center seated, with three of her children: Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, Lauren Bon and Charles Annenberg Weingarten. Each is involved in the Annenberg Foundation.
(Hamish Robertson)
The breadth of Annenberg’s philanthropy was global; but it was most keenly focused on Los Angeles.
Annenberg received the 2022 National Humanities Medal from President Biden for her life in philanthropy.
As outlined in the family trust, control of the foundation passes onto the next generation: Three of Annenberg’s four children who are on the board of directors: Lauren Bon, Gregory Annenberg Weingarten and Charles Annenberg Weingarten. Roger Annenberg Weingarten lives in the L.A. area.
Bon is an artist and founding director of L.A.-based Metabolic Studio, a not-for-profit interdisciplinary art and research hub that explores environmental issues. Gregory Annenberg Weingarten is a former journalist with the Times of London and now is an artist, exhibiting in Europe and the U.S. Charles Annenberg Weingarten is a philanthropist and filmmaker who created Explore, which documents, through films and photographs, selfless acts globally (and has a network of live-cams trained on wildlife).
Besides her four children, Annenberg is survived by five grandchildren.
