Charity
The lord mayor in Bergen, Nils Handal, asked in 1951 Reksten to help establish Festspillene i Bergen, which were held for the first time in 1953. Reksten contributed financially and was also Head of its board for five years. He donated considerable sums to the erection of the museum that now houses Rolf Stenersen's art collection in Bergen, as well as spending around 7.5 millioner kroner to purchase grounds and houses around the planned concert hall, Grieghallen, so that the construction works got started.
In 1967, when the school ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl risked being sold out of the country, Reksten bought the ship and made sure that it remained in Bergen. He supported the Norwegian institute in Rome financially. In 1971 he established a charity fund. Naturally, there was little activity after his bankruptcy; but into the 1990s things started improving, and today Rekstensamlingene (the Reksten collections) are part of Bergen's cultural scene.
Read more about this topic: Hilmar Reksten
Famous quotes containing the word charity:
“Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Opening the door of charity can create problems.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Reputation is not of enough value to sacrifice character for it.”
—“Miss Clark,” U.S. charity worker. As quoted in Petticoat Surgeon, ch. 9, by Bertha Van Hoosen (1947)