“Mrs. Schnitzer often gets the feeling that nobody wants to take her for real.”

So wrote The Oregonian’s Art Chenoweth back in 1967, when Arlene Schnitzer was running a small art gallery on a grungy stretch of Fourth Avenue near Burnside. The question that kept coming up: What exactly does this socialite from Portland Heights think she’s doing “spending all that energy working with struggling painters and sculptors?”

In time Portland’s movers and shakers – and its struggling artists – stopped asking such questions and started appreciating what she was accomplishing. All these years later, her hard work and generosity continue.

The Portland Art Museum announced Tuesday that Schnitzer has given $10 million to the museum, which it calls “the largest contribution from an individual donor” in its 127-year history.

“The extraordinary gift is a profound investment in our role as Portland’s museum for art and film,” executive director Brian Ferriso said in a statement.

The gift is but the latest in Schnitzer’s decades-long investment in the Portland Art Museum.

“Enough is never enough giving back,” the 91-year-old philanthropist and Portland art-scene pioneer said. “And Harold felt as strongly as I do.”

Arlene Schnitzer is seen here in 1984, a couple years before she closed her Fountain Gallery of Art to focus on philanthropy. (The Oregonian)Oregonian

Harold is Arlene Schnitzer’s late husband, who was a long-time real-estate developer in Portland. Over the years the couple donated millions of dollars to local medical, cultural and other institutions.

Mrs. Schnitzer’s connection to the Portland Art Museum in particular is deep and personal. It started in earnest in the 1950s when, as a young wife and mother casting about for something to fill empty afternoons, she signed up for a sketching class at the museum.

“At the door, I was so scared, I was ready to walk out,” she remembered a decade later. She didn’t walk out – instead, the sketching class sparked a lifelong passion.

“Some people found Billy Graham,” she said. “I found art.”

She founded the Fountain Gallery of Art in 1961 while seeking out various ways to promote local artists and keep them in Portland. Fountain, which she ran for 25 years, has been called “the first major gallery in town” -- and it led to many more.

Yet while Portland’s gallery scene grew, Schnitzer never forgot where it all started for her. Over the years, she has contributed to Portland Art Museum capital campaigns and helped build the museum’s collections, especially in Pacific Northwest art and Asian art. Her new, $10 million contribution, the museum says, represents the lead gift in the museum’s soon-to-be-officially-announced Connections Campaign, which will support access, exhibitions and programs, as well as plans for the physical campus -- such as connecting the museum’s two buildings. The museum also said Tuesday it has received a $750,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of the Connections Campaign.

The Portland Art Museum has historically struggled to gain attention outside Oregon, what with larger West Coast cities such as San Francisco and Seattle sporting ambitious, high-profile museums. Arlene Schnitzer has arguably done as much as anyone to help the Rose City’s foremost art institution make its name across the region.

“It has been very exciting to see the museum change and grow,” she said. “And to watch interest in the art of the Northwest blossom.”

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.