Museum Receives Transformational $1.25 Million Gift
- Jan 9, 2025
- 3 min read
NEW ORLEANS, January 9, 2025 – The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE), in New Orleans, is excited to announce that it has received a $1.25 million gift from Dave and Amy Chapman Fulton to name its new research center, which opened in November 2024. The Chapman Family Research Center (the Center) will honor Amy Chapman’s Southern Jewish ancestors, and give scholars, historians, and people seeking to research their Southern Jewish roots a new home for exploration and discovery.
The new Center, located on the museum’s third floor, includes spaces devoted to artifact conservation and digitization, a secure vault to hold the museum’s growing archival collection, an oral history and distance learning studio, and a reading room and reference library, where Center staff have already begun offering genealogy and artifact preservation workshops.
“While I was mostly inspired by my dad for his love of family and passion for tracing our family tree,” says Amy Chapman Fulton, “our gift is meant to honor the entire Chapman family – my Bubby (Mollie) and Zadie (Nathan), who immigrated from Russia in the early 1900s, and my dad (Norman) and his four brothers (Jake, Harold, Milton, and Julius) who all grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana. My cousins and I would not be the people we are today without the example they set with their love of family and close ties to Judaism.”
The Center is the realization of the MSJE’s vision for the museum’s expansion. “Since we opened in 2021, countless people have asked us to help them learn more about their Southern Jewish history,” says Executive Director Kenneth Hoffman. “The Chapman Family Research Center is now an important part of the museum’s mission to expand their understanding of what it can mean to be a Southerner, a Southern Jew, and ultimately, an American.”
Along with the gift from the Fultons, the museum received financial support from people across the South, particularly the leadership giving of the Perlin Family Foundation, of Fairfax Station, VA, the Ben May Charitable Trust, of Mobile, AL, Joanne B. Fried, of Metairie, LA, and Dr. Ivan Sherman, of New Orleans, LA.
The museum will host a naming ceremony recognizing the Fultons and their support for the Chapman Family Research Center at a date to be announced.
About Dave Fulton:
Dave Fulton, a native of Eugene, Oregon, received his Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from the University of Connecticut, in 1970. During his academic career, he performed professionally with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra as a violinist. He then founded the Department of Computer Science at Bowling Green State University, serving as its Professor and Chairman for ten years. While there, he co-founded Fox Software, which became internationally known for its database management application, FoxPro. Following the sale of Fox Software to Microsoft in 1992, Dave served as Microsoft’s Vice President for Database Products until his retirement in 1994.
Since then, Dave has pursued his life’s passions, including assembling one of the world’s great collections of stringed instruments and playing string quartets with three Seattle Symphony members on a weekly basis for 16 years. The stringed instrument collection led to making friendships with many of the great violinists of the time, from Isaac Stern to Itzhak Perlman to James Ehnes. Fulton has also produced several documentary films, Homage (2008) and Violin Masters: Two Gentlemen of Cremona (2010), about great violins, violin makers, violinists, and even a film about a pianist, Song of Rapa Nui (2020).
About Amy Chapman Fulton:
Amy was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After graduating from Bowling Green State University in 1979 with a degree in computer science, Amy took a job at Dacor, Dave’s software consulting firm, where she worked several years developing database software.
It was during that time that Dave and Amy married and started their family. Amy continued to work full-time, bringing their children to the office as long as she could. In June of 1992, Fox Software was purchased by Microsoft and Amy became a software engineer there. The sale of Fox Software made the couple’s early retirement in 1994 possible. She has spent the years since raising her children, assisting her husband in producing several music related documentaries, and building a world-renowned stringed instrument collection. In addition, Amy and Dave are passionate Pacific Northwest boaters.
In 2018, Dave and Amy donated their instrument collection to the David and Amy Fulton Foundation, which continues to use the proceeds from their sale to help worthy charitable organizations, musical causes, medical research, and Jewish organizations.
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