AKRON, Ohio – The Akron Art Museum announced Saturday it raised $17 million during the 3-year “silent” phase of its $20 million Vision 2020 capital campaign. Now it’s upping the ante to raise a total of $25 million by 2022, its centennial year.

“We’re close,” Mark Masuoka, the museum’s director since 2013, said Friday. “We’re confident we’re going to hit $25 million.”

The museum will use $20 million from the extended campaign to boost its $25 million endowment. Of the rest, $2 million will be devoted to special programs, and $3 million to regular operations.

In 2017, the museum announced receiving an $8 million grant from the Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation – the biggest single gift in its history.

On Saturday, the museum said receiving it had received a combined total of $2.5 million from donors Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell, Dana Pulk Dickinson and Thomas Merryweather.

Other donors include the Rick and Alita Rogers Family Foundation, the J.M. Smucker Company, Myrna Berzon, the Sandra L. and Dennis B. Haslinger Family Foundation, the Lehner Family Foundation, Herb and Dianne Newman, Rory and Dedee O’Neil and the State of Ohio.

Money raised so far helped complete the museum’s Bud and Susie Rogers Garden, which opened in July 2016.

As the museum moves into the public phase of its campaign, it will highlight the need for additional endowment funds, plus a capital campaign to establish the Center for Creative Learning - a permanent home for its education and public programs - and a special fund to support those programs.

“This is a time for the museum to grow, and a time to look at what’s necessary to reach our goals,” Masuoka said.

One major goal is to increase attendance from 80,000 to 100,000 a year by 2022, he said.

The museum operates on a $4.5 million budget, with 75 employees, about half of whom are full time.

In 2007, the museum completed and architecturally dramatic, $35 million, 63,300-square-foot expansion, designed by the Viennese architecture firm of Coop Himmelb(l)au.

The building features jutting, crystalline forms in metal and glass that house functional galleries with 16-foot ceilings ideal for displaying contemporary art – the museum’s principal focus.

Masuoka said he loves the building, and that it’s working well for the museum and its public.

“It’s an amazing building,” he said. “I couldn’t ask for a better museum.”