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The Computer History Museum in Mountain View has received two gifts totaling roughly $14 million to renovate its computer graphics gallery and preserve the collection of Autodesk co-founder John W. Walker.
The gifts came from a donor identified as Mad Scientists Anonymous and will establish the John and Roxie Walker Computer Graphics, Music & Art Gallery, scheduled to open in spring 2027. The donation will also endow a series of rotating exhibitions and help make Walker’s personal and professional materials available to researchers and the public.
“We’re excited to honor John Walker, a tremendous figure in the history of computing,” museum President and CEO Marc Etkind said. Walker helped develop AutoCAD, which Etkind said “really transformed digital design and computer-aided design.”
The redesigned gallery will cover the development of computer graphics from its earliest years through contemporary animation and design. Historical objects will be paired with video, animation and storytelling, with features including large-scale projection mapping.
“You could not have Pixar and ‘Toy Story’ without this unique development in history,” Etkind said.
Museum curators chose to place graphics, music and art together because the technologies used in those fields developed alongside one another, Etkind said. The gallery will examine how computers became tools for creative professionals, including artists, musicians and designers.
The museum is preparing to begin physical construction after working with designers and other creators on the gallery. Etkind said exhibit development, video production and construction will continue roughly the next nine months.
Museum records indicator that the donor has supported the institution previously. Mad Scientists Anonymous appears among donors who contributed at least $65,536 during the 2024-25 fiscal year on the museum’s annual donor list. It is listed amongst supporters who have given at least $10 million to the museum’s Power On fundraising campaign.
The campaign page places the value of gifts honoring Walker at $14.2 million. Etkind described the contribution as one of the largest donations in the museum’s history and said some of the money will be placed in an endowment to support exhibitions over the long term.
Walker, who died in 2024 at age 74, was Autodesk’s principal co-founder, first president and an initial co-author of AutoCAD. Introduced in 1982, the program helped move computer-aided design from expensive specialized systems onto personal computers, expanding its use in architecture, engineering and industrial design. The museum’s existing computer-aided design gallery describes AutoCAD as an influential program in the growth of digital design.
The museum recently acquired a collection of Walker’s papers and other materials, including records documenting Autodesk. The gifts will support the work required to preserve and organize the collection and make portions available through the museum’s research archives and OpenCHM digital portal.
Etkind said Walker’s papers provide a firsthand view of a pivotal period in digital design while also showing the range of subjects that occupied him.
“To see it from one of the creators gives you that basically witness-to-history moment,” he said.
When the Walker gallery opens, Etkind said he hopes visitors leave with a better understanding of how modern digital tools evolved – and with the belief that they could contribute to what comes next.
“I want people when they come to a museum to leave with that spark,” Etkind said, “that idea that I can be an engineer, I can be an inventor, I can be an entrepreneur.”
