Edward P. Bass first visited Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History in 1952 when he was 6 years old. Sixty-six years later he has donated $160 million toward renovating the museum, the university announced Tuesday.

Mr. Bass, a Yale alumnus, businessman and philanthropist, said his gift was motivated by a belief in institutions.

“I see institutions as having the power to transmit and perpetuate a set of fundamental values, and to do so generation to generation,” he said in a phone interview. Yale, he added, is a particularly strong institution with a long history: “It’s been more than 300 years, so I have some faith.”

The Peabody Museum, founded in 1866, is home to about 13 million objects — fossils, dinosaur skeletons, minerals and meteorites, and scientific instruments among them — from more than four billion years of history. It has been operating in its current location since 1925.