Max Palevsky - Arts, Culture, and Venture Capital

Arts, Culture, and Venture Capital

As a venture capitalist, Palevsky helped to fund many companies, including Intel, which grew to become one of the nation's leading semiconductor companies and a pioneer in the development of memory chips and microprocessors. Palevsky became a director along with Arthur Rock, who helped bankroll SDS, at the company's founding, on July 18, 1968, as Integrated Electronics Corporation, a name later changed to Intel (August 6, 1968). Intel was funded with $2 million in venture capital assembled by Arthur Rock. Palevsky became a director emeritus in February 1998.

Palevsky also became a director and board chairman of Rolling Stone magazine, which he rescued from financial ruin in 1970 by buying a substantial share of the stock. While on the board he became friends with the late Hunter S. Thompson, inventor of what came to be called Gonzo journalism. In December 1970, Cinema V, a movie-theater distribution operation, entered film production in a joint venture, Cinema X, with Palevsky. Palevsky went into independent production with Peter Bart, former production vice president of Paramount Pictures in November 1973, with a Paramount contract to produce six features in three years. Palevsky produced and bankrolled several Hollywood films, including Fun with Dick and Jane and Islands in the Stream both with Peter Bart in 1977, and Endurance in 1998. Author Albert Goldman dedicated his controversial 1988 biography The Lives of John Lennon to Palevsky. In June 1977, Palevsky was elected to the board of the American Ballet Theater.

Palevsky also served as a director and Chairman of the Board of Silicon Systems Inc. of Tustin, California, from April 1983 until February 1984; as chairman and chief executive of the board of Daisy Systems Corporation, a maker of computer systems used to design electronic circuits based in Mountain View, California; and, from November 1984 to 1999, as a director of Komag Corp., a Milpitas, California, based maker of data storage media.

Palevsky also collected art, particularly Japanese woodblock prints, and gave generously to establish and maintain institutions of visual art. He established the Palevsky Design Pavilion at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He also built an Arts & Crafts collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and donated $1 million to help establish the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2001, he promised his art holdings to LACMA, but his collection of 250 works was scheduled to be sold by Christie's in the Fall of 2010.

Max Palevsky funded the American Cinematheque's refurbishment of the Aero Theater in Santa Monica. The theater re-opened in January 2005 and bears his name.