The Brooklyn Academy of Music has received a $20 million gift – the largest donation in the organization’s 143-year history – from the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. The gift is to go into the arts organization’s capital fund.

BAM is currently bidding on the Salvation Army building adjacent to its main campus. The sale has been stalled by the Salvation Army’s search for new space, but the Sharp donation will be used in part to fund the eventual purchase.

The president of the Sharp Foundation and a former business partner of Sharp’s, Norman Peck, said the gift was a response to the city’s cutbacks over the last two years in subsidies for cultural institutions. “I’m a Brooklynite originally myself,” Mr. Peck said. “My grandmother was involved with BAM when I was a kid. It had gone through this horrible patch and is now coming back.”

Mr. Peck is the vice chairman of BAM’s endowment trust board, and the Sharp Foundation has already given between $5 million and $6 million to BAM. The largest of the four movie theaters at the Rose Cinemas is already named for Sharp. The contribution was originally discussed to fund the building purchase, but, Mr. Peck said, the president of BAM, Karen Brooks Hopkins, proposed a contribution to the capital fund, which could not only help buy the new building but also fund the completion of the renovation of the main building.

BAM officials could not be reached for comment on the gift.

BAM will use part of the gift to find more space for its community and youth programs. The academy offers a wide variety of programs, including “Shakespeare Teaches Teachers” for public school teachers, a young critics program for high school students, and a series of children’s movies from overseas and from less well-known directors.

On October 25,the arts center’s main building, which houses the Howard Gillman Opera House, the Rose Cinemas, and The BAMCafe, will be renamed the Peter Jay Sharp Building at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The building will be registered with the National Registry of Historic Buildings under the new name and a small glass display case narrating Sharp’s life story will be installed in the lobby.

Sharp earned his money in real estate. His family was already in the hotel business, but he eventually went out on his own and made his fortune developing hotels and office towers in Manhattan. As a philanthropist he donated to numerous city cultural institutions, including the City Opera and Lincoln Center. He died from melanoma in 1992.

The foundation was formed out of the properties that remained after Sharp’s family received their inheritances. Since it was all in real estate, Mr. Peck managed the properties, selling them one by one, so he could give the money away as fast as possible. The fund currently stands at $200 million, with only minor properties left to liquidate.

“We’re giving it away on a scale he couldn’t have imagined, because of the way we’ve managed the properties,” Mr. Peck said.

The foundation focuses its giving in the arts. Playwright’s Horizon and Symphony Space are recent recipients of foundation gifts. Under Mr. Peck’s guidance, though, the foundation is also supporting melanoma research – the fund was a major donor for the imaging center at Mt. Sinai Hospital – and for people trying to recover from addiction or re-enter the world after jail sentences. The Peter Jay Sharp Residence on East 117th Street provides studio apartments for $325 a month, and includes amenities like a gym, a doorman, and meeting spaces for Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous.