Since its creation in 1978 the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation has made meaningful grants to scores of medical, cultural, and educational institutions. In keeping with its belief that institutions, programs, and people of promise should be supported in ways that enable them to concentrate on their projects rather than on fundraising, Foundation grants have often been transformative and visionary in magnitude. As Iris Cantor has said,

"Before I become personally involved in a project, I look for two essential qualities. First, the cause must be something I feel passionate about. And second, I want to make a real difference by supporting that cause … and by encouraging others to do the same."

Over the past 30 years, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation grants have certainly made their mark. The Foundation has made a substantial difference by investing in key institutions, making possible strategic decisions at critical junctures.

When Mr. and Mrs. Cantor were introduced to Stanford University, they were not only impressed by the level of academic achievement for which the University is universally acknowledged, they were also taken with the beauty of the campus. Mr. Cantor once reminisced about his first visit there, in 1973:

"I had an immediate affinity with the place; it had everything, a beautiful nineteenth-century building with a rotunda, which dates from Rodin’s lifetime, and large exterior space for a sculpture garden, which I paced off…. It had a built-in Rodin scholar of worldwide reputation in professor (Albert) Elsen…. Furthermore, I wanted my collection to be exposed not only to the public but to students and Rodin scholars."

When the Loma Prieta earthquake hit Northern California in 1989, the severely damaged Stanford University Art Museum was forced to close. The Cantor Foundation rescued the institution with a significant grant for rebuilding. When the Museum reopened ten years later, it was re-named the “Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts” in acknowledgement of their support. 

The Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center was the first such facility that gave women immediate access to the wide arena of specialists and tests necessary to ensure good health. As Iris Cantor says, “Convenience is an incentive to good health.” Under the direction of the UCLA physician and professor who literally wrote the contemporary textbook on women’s health, the Center has flourished since its founding in 1992. Repeatedly designated a ‘Center of Excellence’ by the National Institutes of Health, it is a model for women’s care centers nationwide.

Created as an integral part of the center – because Iris Cantor believes that women who are educated about their health are healthier – is the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Education and Resource Center. Its health education programs reach underserved populations where they reside. Most programs are collaborations with other health and social service agencies that serve poor, often non-English-speaking neighborhoods. Programs are usually multi-generational and designed to educate the entire family.

At UCLA, the Foundation has supported other areas in health care and medicine, especially research and clinical care in nephrology and digestive diseases. In addition, the Cantor Foundation has also provided major philanthropic leadership by providing major grants to the University’s school of business and to the fine arts.

New York-Presbyterian Hospital has also been transformed by Iris and B. Gerald Cantor and their Foundation. The Cantor Foundation has funded obstetric and gynecology facilities, an ambulatory surgery center, and renovations to the Lying-In Hospital. The Foundation also contributed generously to recent major modernization efforts. It has funded symposia, an immunology fund, programs about issues affecting women’s health, and professorships.

The donation that created the most excitement at New York-Presbyterian Hospital was the gift in 2000 that implemented in New York Iris Cantor’s vision for women’s health care. Building on the pioneering efforts of the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center, the Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital opened in 2002. It confirmed the new paradigm in patient care by taking into account the fact that women are busy. Thus a patient coming to the Health Center finds all necessary medical services there. Today, the Cantor model for clinical care for women is widely admired and emulated.

"In April 2002, the Iris Cantor Women's Health Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center celebrated its grand opening and today is one of the most comprehensive medical facilities for women in the world. The Center has served close to 90,000 women and men (2008) and has demonstrated Mrs. Cantor's inspiration for the Center: Convenience is an incentive to good health."
–Orli R. Etingin, M.D., Director, Iris Cantor Women's Health Center
–Herbert Pardes, M.D., President & Chief Executive Officer, New York Presbyterian Hospital

In education, a grant from the Foundation made it possible for the Alumni Association of Brooklyn’s DeWitt Clinton High School to create the B. Gerald Cantor Business Center in the School library. Here, with the help of student mentors, Clinton students learn to use computers as a business tool; they have on-line access to other educational activities that prepare them for their future. Bernie Cantor was an alumni of Clinton. The Business Center plaque says “B. Gerald Cantor was always proud to say he was a Clinton man. A grateful school acknowledges one of its greatest sons.”

A highlight of a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a visit to the Cantor Roof Garden, considered by many to be the most dramatic outdoor space for sculpture in New York City. Overlooking Central Park, the Roof Garden features changing exhibitions of modern and contemporary sculpture that are both challenging and rewarding. Among the Foundation’s other gifts is an endowment for special exhibitions and publications in modern art and European sculpture and decorative arts. This endowment has enabled the Museum to mount extraordinary exhibitions every few years; recently these have showcased the achievements of French bronze sculptors from the 15th to 18th centuries, the Spanish master El Greco, and Picasso, the Met's most well-attended show since 2001. These exhibitions have been accompanied by important scholarly catalogues. Another Cantor fund at the Met has supported acquisitions of European sculpture and decorative arts.

The Brooklyn Museum of Art has received Foundation gifts for many years in the form of outright funding of programs and building projects as well as gifts of works of art. In addition, Iris Cantor, while serving as Vice President of the Museum’s Board of Trustees, worked tirelessly to secure an appropriate level of public funding for this esteemed New York museum located in the community where she was born.

At NYU the Cantor Foundation has concentrated on arts and business education. In 1991, the Foundation made a generous gift to the building fund of the Stern School of Business’ Management Education Center, a dramatic way for Bernie Cantor to celebrate the city where he created his successful company and honed his highly respected management skills. The B. Gerald Cantor Boardroom was named after him in appreciation.

Under Iris Cantor’s leadership, the Foundation has taken an avid interest in Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Long interested in filmmaking, in 1979 Iris Cantor produced an award-winning documentary about the casting of Rodin’s monumental Gates of Hell. With Foundation support, a 1938 Art Moderne movie palace in Tisch’s immediate neighborhood was transformed into the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, which provides state-of-the-art lecture halls and screening facilities for both student work and international film festivals. The Foundation has also created an endowed scholarship fund at Tisch, which has been named in honor of Iris and B. Gerald Cantor, to support students of exceptional promise in creative studies.

"We are so thankful for the spirit and generosity of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation whose transformative support directly impacts the lives of the storytellers and artists who will undoubtly shape the cultural landscape of tomorrow."
–Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

For decades, the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation has supported Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s research into the causes, treatment, and pathology – including family genetics – of breast cancer. It has also underwritten research into lung cancer and digestive cancers. In 1989, the Foundation funded Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Iris Cantor Center for Diagnostic Imaging and Breast Cancer; today this groundbreaking facility is a fulcrum for Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s treatment of breast cancer.

The first museum to exhibit the Cantor Collection of Rodin sculpture was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. With Homage to Rodin, LACMA and Mr. Cantor began a long and significant relationship. Soon, the relationship included Iris Cantor and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. Since 1968, the Foundation has supported building programs, acquisitions, and exhibitions. It underwrote the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Rodin Gallery, the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden, the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Fund for acquisitions in decorative arts and sculpture, and exhibitions as varied as the work of Gustave Caillebotte, Treasures of the Holy Land, and Sargent and Italy. The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation has also supported numerous public programs and donated thirty-six works of art to LACMA, most of these important Rodins.

"Since the opening of LACMA in 1965, B. Gerald Cantor (Bernie) demonstrated a profound devotion to the arts and to the citizens of Los Angeles. In 1974 a donation of 52 Rodin sculptures established the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden, which featured Rodin's Monument to Balzac as the work of art welcoming all visitors to the Museum. Bernie and his wife Iris served as trustees to the Museum and established the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Plaza and the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery; they have also generously funded other LACMA programs. Their tradition of philanthropy is continued today by their Foundation, led by Iris Cantor, which funds medical, educational, cultural and arts programs throughout the world."
–Plaque on Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Plaza, Los Angeles County Museum of Art