The University of St. Thomas has done it again: The Catholic university on Thursday announced another record donation.

The gift this time comes from longtime donor John Monahan, who’s made a $20 million donation to St. Thomas’s College of Arts and Sciences. In a statement, university officials said it’s the largest gift for arts education in the school’s history. It’s also on par with the “largest known public gift to a university for the arts ever received” in Minnesota, according to St. Thomas.

The school plans to use the endowed gift to improve arts programming and education, recruit and retain faculty in the arts, and provide scholarships for undergraduate students seeking degrees in art history, digital media arts, creative writing, film studies, and music. Rob Vischer, president of the University of St. Thomas, said the school isn’t sharing details on how much money will go toward each endeavor. “It will be evolving as we go,” he said in an interview with TCB.

Though the gift is largely intended for the arts, Vischer said it will benefit students of all kinds. “I think that’s where the gift will be especially relevant,” he said of non-arts majors. “We don’t want students to be siloed.”

Bill Tolman, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at St. Thomas, noted that the university already sees wide participation in the arts across the student body. “Currently, most of the members of the ensembles and choruses on campuses are actually not [music] majors,” he said.

The donation is notable at a time where other higher ed institutions in the state and around the country have pared back their arts programs. St. Cloud State University, for instance, ended its theater program entirely amid a wave of cuts in 2023. Vischer believes the recent gift will help St. Thomas avoid similar cuts.

For his part, Tolman sees arts education filling a “key need in society right now” for empathy and understanding. “Arts and arts education play a really big role in this,” he said. “Arts can empower students.”

Monahan’s name is another familiar one on campus: There’s the John P. Monahan Plaza on the St. Paul campus, as well as the John P. Monahan Gallery inside the new Schoenecker Center for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. Monahan also gifted a sculpture for that building.

Vischer said that Monahan has had a philanthropic relationship with the school that dates back at least 25 years. Monahan, who lives in Palm Springs, California, graduated from St. Thomas in 1973.

“John, as an alum, has been an arts patron in the communities where he’s lived,” Vischer said. “I know he wants to strengthen the arts at St. Thomas in significant part because he sees the commitment we’ve made to the arts.”

“This gift reflects my commitment to the arts as a vital part of higher education, and I hope that people who are able to support the arts also think about arts education because this is where it all starts,” Monahan said in a statement.

News of Monahan’s gift follows a string of blockbuster donations for St. Thomas. In September, the university announced that it received a record donation for scholarships from the Schoenecker family. And, in early 2023, the school received a $75 million gift to build a new arena on campus.