Perot Museum of Nature and Science

Perot Museum of Nature and Science

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science was established in 2006, when the Dallas Museum of Natural History, the Science Place, and the Dallas Children's Museum merged under a single banner. The Perot name arrived in 2008, after the five children of Margot and Ross Perot donated $50 million to the combined entity. The gift connected the institution to one of Texas's most storied technology fortunes, rooted in Ross Perot's 1962 founding of Electronic Data Systems, which he sold to General Motors in 1984. The museum's strategy is rooted in physical curation and public education, not financial portfolio construction. It operates two campuses — the Thom Mayne-designed Victory Park flagship and the original Fair Park site — plus an off-site collections facility. Its investment posture centers on maintaining and expanding tangible scientific assets: the Lyda Hill Gems and Minerals Collection, a paleontology collection, and zoology specimens. Reciprocal admission through the Association of Science-Technology Centers Passport Program expands its audience without cash outlays. The estimated $28 million endowment supporting this work is modest by institutional allocation standards, and the museum does not publicly disclose a professional investment team. Major capital campaigns have historically relied on co-investors from Texas's energy and finance circles, including gifts from T. Boone Pickens, the Hoglund Foundation, and the Rees-Jones Foundation, alongside the Perot Foundation. The structural differentiator is that the museum functions less like a typical endowment allocating to outside managers and more like a real-asset operating company. Its value is concentrated in owned collections and real estate, not a diversified securities portfolio. This architecture means support comes from philanthropy and earned revenue, with any financial endowment serving a supporting role rather than driving opportunistic investment mandates.