The museum at 28 Wooster Street. (Courtesy Leslie-Lohman Museum)

Last year, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian art received official certification of its charter from New York State, the first gay and lesbian art museum to obtain such recognition. Now it has another reason to celebrate: two gifts totaling some $10.3 million, which it says is the largest single donation ever made to an LGBT arts group.

A full $8.8 million of that money comes from museum co-founder Charles W. Leslie in honor of his late partner Frederic D. Lohman, the museum's other co-founder, who died in 2009. The other gift, a sum of $1.5 million, was given by the estate of artist Marion Pinto.

The Leslie-Lohman Museum was founded in 1990 and right now is showing two exhibitions, "The Piers," about art made along the Hudson waterfront in the 1970's and 80's, and "We Are the Youth," comprised of photographs of gay and lesbian young people by Laurel Golio, which are accompanied by interviews with them by Diana Scholl.