A gift from the heart
Bromberg bequest inspired by lifelong interests in art, the law and education
The bequest includes a $2 million endowment to establish the Anne and Alan Bromberg Chair in the Meadows School of the Arts, as well as unrestricted funds to be divided among Dedman Law, the Meadows School and the Meadows Museum.
“Dr. Bromberg’s farsighted generosity reflects the dedication to scholarship and education that she and Alan shared over a lifetime,” said SMU President R. Gerald Turner. “Their passion for art and the law will live on in future generations as a result of the planned gift. It will allow SMU to direct resources toward our highest priorities in those areas, as well an endowed chair that will allow us to attract and retain faculty of distinction in the arts.”
Natives of Dallas, the Brombergs knew one another all of their lives, first meeting as children through their mothers, who were close friends. A mutual admiration of art, education, history and culture drew Anne and Alan together from the beginning. Throughout their 54-year marriage, they traveled the world, exploring foreign cultures and collecting ancient art from Bali, India, Sri Lanka and other countries.
The couple also loved reading. Their Dallas home, where Bromberg still lives, holds a vast book collection, accumulated over decades, that reflects her late husband’s copious legal scholarship and their combined penchant for the arts and the natural world. As part of her bequest, the books are destined for SMU Libraries.
“Alan loved being an SMU law professor, and he also had a keen interest in art, photography and culture,” Bromberg said. “I’ve had long conversations with SMU about how the bequest might be used, and I respect their vision that encompasses our interests that were so closely interwoven. We were beyond fortunate to have shared so much together.”
Bromberg is the Cecil and Ida Green Curator for Ancient Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, where she has worked for more than 50 years, lecturing, training docents and writing books. Her curatorial portfolio includes Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs(2008) ‒ the most popular exhibition in DMA history; Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting(2007) and Splendors of China’s Forbidden City: the Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong(2004). Her early career included teaching art history at SMU and theater history at the Dallas Theater Center.
Her late husband taught at SMU Dedman School of Law for more than 60 years and was a prolific author. His legal writings on corporate tax, partnership, securities and commodities have been relied upon in more than 500 judicial opinions, including 10 in the U.S. Supreme Court.
As a tribute to his distinguished career spent teaching and enriching the legal profession, she established the Alan R. Bromberg Centennial Chair in Corporate, Partnership and Securities Law in Dedman Law in 2015.
