A shipping magnate who once served in the Royal Navy made the largest single donation to a British cultural project yesterday: £20 million to the National Maritime Museum.

In an extraordinary act of philanthropy, Sammy Ofer, an 86-year-old Israeli billionaire, gave the money to pay for the construction of a new wing at the museum. It will be opened in time for the London Olympics in 2012 and the museum’s 75th anniversary.

Lord Sterling of Plaistow, the museum’s chairman, joked that the tongues of most museum directors would be hanging out with envy.

The donation far exceeds that of the banker John Studzinski to Tate Modern, or the businessman Christopher Ondaatje to the National Portrait Gallery. Although J. Paul Getty Jr gave £50 million to the National Gallery, it was an endowment fund to be drawn upon for various causes.

Mr Ofer is a self-made businessman who has built up a vast shipping empire. With his family — notably his sons Eyal and Idan — he is reported to be worth $6.7 billion (£3.3 billion) and was ranked 140 in last year’s Forbes World Rich List. He is based in Monaco, with homes in London and Tel Aviv that he fills with a vast art collection, and has strong links with Britain. He served in the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean during the Second World War, and the international shipping group that he founded operates a significant part of its fleet from London, with more than 90 vessels flying the Red Ensign.

Commenting on his gift yesterday, he said in a statement: “I look forward to helping this hugely exciting project and believe it will be a great step forward for the museum.”

Although Mr Ofer shuns publicity, he agreed to the museum’s suggestion that the new wing carry his name. Art world sources dismissed reports that he had pulled out of a promised hefty donation to the Tel Aviv Museum two years ago over a name change.

Lord Sterling, former chairman of P&O and a close friend of Mr Ofer’s, said that he was “a very generous man” who had quietly given $70 million to hospitals and other causes in the past two years alone.

In a statement Gordon Brown paid tribute to Mr Ofer. “Our maritime story is Britain’s national story,” he said. “I applaud this opportunity to promote engagement with our maritime past, present and future, which has only been made possible by this unique gift to the nation.”

The National Maritime Museum, the largest of its kind in the world, incorporates the Royal Observatory and the 17th-century Queen’s House. It boasts the important holdings tracing the history of Britain at sea, including material relating to Nelson and Captain James Cook, among some 2.5 million items.

In 1997 the Unesco World Heritage Committee declared the museum a World Heritage Site. Last year it attracted 1.7 million visitors, and was ninth in the league table of leading visitor attractions.

The £20 million donation will go towards a £35 million wing in the southwest corner of the site that will give the museum up to 1,000 sq m in which to stage exhibitions. Kevin Fewster, the museum director, said that without the donation the task of raising the money would have been such a long, drawn-out struggle that construction of the wing in time for 2012 would have been unlikely.

Big spenders

— Sir Arthur Gilbert donated his collection of gold and silver to the nation and demanded that a waxwork dummy of himself was installed as part of the exhibition

— Sir William Burrell’s collection lay in storage for decades until Glasgow City Council built a gallery in the middle of a park

— Lord Rothschild funded refurbishment of the National Gallery Central Hall which included inscriptions in imposing gold lettering dedicated to him

— Lord Duveen built the great sculpture galleries of the Tate, below, and stipulated that a portrait of his father and a bust of himself be displayed. The trustees held out against that request

— Colin Tweedy, head of Arts and Business, which fosters links between the two sectors, said of Sammy Ofer’s gift: “Private philanthropy is now effectively larger than public funding for many institutions. There is less corporate giving, more individual giving. It’s not rich landowners, but first generation wealth giving in their own lifetime.”

Source: Arts & Business