He was also an important patron and collector of the visual arts, perhaps best remembered for his support of Frederic Edwin Church, which resulted in the 1871 masterwork The Parthenon that came into the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Jesup's substantial bequest of many important paintings of the Hudson River School and more at the time of his wife's death in 1915. Jesup contributed to educational institutions. His contributions to Tuskegee Institute enabled George Washington Carver to develop a mobile educational station that he took to farmers. Jesup was treasurer of the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen at its beginning. He served as a member of the Peabody Educational Board and of the General Education Board. He gave $51,000 to the Yale Divinity School; to Yale University, he gave the Landbery Arabic manuscripts, for which he had paid $20,000. Williams College received $35,000. He presented Jesup Hall to the Union Theological Seminary. In 1881, he was appointed president of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City, to which he gave large sums in his lifetime and bequeathed $1,000,000. In 1883 he became chairman of the newly formed Forestry Committee of the New York Chamber of Commerce, tasked with "saving the woods and waters of the State [i.e.New York]," an early step in a process that eventually led to the creation of New York State's Adirondack Park in 1894. New York City business interests at the time were fearful that deforestation of the Adirondacks would ruin the Hudson River waterways upon which their business was dependent. The Forestry Committee pressured the state legislature to purchase lands in the Adirondack forest, and proposed a model bill. The legislature did not authorize the purchase of lands, but set aside about 700,000 acres of state holdings from future sale. In 1885, Governor Hill signed a new bill into law creating a "Forest Preserve" in the Adirondacks, however, cutting rights were soon being sold to private companies and individuals, and even to the lumberman on the newly created state Forest Commission. In response, in 1890, as president of the New York State Forestry Association, Jesup's group was one of many to propose new bills whose purpose was to create an Adirondack park. Downriver businessmen did not want any lumbering activities in the proposed park area. In 1892, Governor Flower signed the Adirondack Park Enabling Act,