On Thursday, May 28, the Hudson River Museum will host Galloping Forward: A Hudson River Museum Gala, a festive evening celebrating creativity, community, and galloping into our future together. This special event is our single most important fundraiser of the year, and we are excited to honor deserving individuals, including community champions Brett Humphreys and Samantha Merton, who have been active and invested supporters of the Hudson River Museum since moving to Hastings-on-Hudson twenty-five years ago. The Museum is proudly recognizing Brett and Samantha for their longstanding philanthropy and leadership, including stepping forward to champion our major digitization initiative when federal funding was cut, and supporting impactful HRM educational initiatives, including our award-winning Junior Docent Program.

Especially when their children were young, Brett and Samantha appreciated visiting the Museum and introducing their daughters to Hudson River School artists, creating hands-on art projects with Junior Docents, visiting Glenview decorated for the holidays, and, of course, inspiring dreams of outer space at the planetarium.

Brett and Samantha met as undergraduates at Harvard University. Brett holds a PhD from Penn State in Mineral Economics and professionally works as a commodity risk manager. He has been head of Commodity Risk for Morgan Stanley and Citadel and is currently head of risk management for Karbone Inc., a renewable commodity broker-dealer. For the last three years, Brett has served as Chair of the Leadership Council for Roundabout Theatre Company and was a former Finance Chair for Memorial United Methodist Church in White Plains.

Samantha holds an MBA and an MA in Statistics from Columbia University and was a market researcher for Sesame Workshop, as well as a Graduate School Admissions Advisor for Stratus Admissions. She served on the Board of Cluster Community Services in Yonkers and was President of the Hastings Education Foundation. In her spare time, Samantha is a Scholarship Reader and Reviewer for QuestBridge, the CollegeBound Foundation, and the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund (FEEA). While she enjoys working part-time as a Sensory Panelist, Samantha currently spends most of her time as a Trustee for the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson.

Brett and Samantha’s greatest accomplishment has been raising their three daughters, Gweneth, Elinor, and Tess. Gwen and Ellie graduated from college and now live and work in Manhattan, and Tess is finishing her sophomore year at Syracuse University.

Family favorites at the Museum include: Light Atlas by Cynthia Deaignault, anything by Richard Haas, Dancers Among Us by Jordan Matter, Aphrodisiac 30 by Seongmin Anh, Plastic Reef by Federico Uribe, Whitfield Lovell: All Things in Time, and the I Want Candy exhibition. Over the years, Brett and Samantha have shared these pieces and many more with friends and family, bringing them as guests to exhibitions, parties, planetarium shows, and, of course, the annual gala.