The Arts & Education

Saluting the Life and Legacy of Alexander W. Dreyfoos

The Palm Beaches lost a totemic figure in 2023 when engineer, philanthropist and fervent arts supporter Alexander Wallace Dreyfoos died at age 91. Dreyfoos passed away peacefully in his sleep on May 28 at Lourdes Noreen McKeen Residence in West Palm Beach.

Dreyfoos had an outsized impact on culture and education in the Palm Beaches, lending his name to the esteemed Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts and the largest performance hall in the Kravis Center. This page of the Education Guide to the Palm Beaches, which typically spotlights an initiative from one of the Chamber’s partners in arts and education, is dedicated this year to Dreyfoos’ profound contributions to this intersection.

Born in 1932, Dreyfoos received his bachelor’s of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) (1954) and his M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School (1958). A prolific inventor, he held numerous US and foreign patents in the fields of electronics and photography, which would form the basis of Photo Electronics Corporation, a business he launched in 1963 to manufacture electronic equipment for the photographic industry. The success of Photo Electronics— the company would receive an Academy Award in 1970 for its pioneering application of digital imaging technology—led to his formation of the Dreyfoos Group, a private capital management firm.

Dreyfoos’ commitment to the arts in the Palm Beaches traces back to 1978, when he formed what is now the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County, the region’s first multitiered arts organization. Around the same time, Dreyfoos spearheaded efforts to build the $67 million, privately financed Kravis Center for the Performing Arts. His dream of a performing arts center in West Palm Beach would come to fruition in 1992, with Dreyfoos serving as a lifelong member of its board.

Dreyfoos followed this accomplishment with what at the time was the largest private donation ever made to a public school in Florida: a $1 million investment to a public arts magnet school in the Palm Beaches. The Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, whose graduates have attended Harvard, Juilliard, M.I.T., Princeton and Yale, continues to educate the brightest of the brightest in the creative arts. In 2023, it ranked 136th out of Niche’s list of 20,032 public high schools in the United States.

A lifelong outdoorsman, Dreyfoos was a member of the New York Yacht Club, the Sailfish Club of Florida, First Unitarian Church of Palm Beach County, and The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. He has also been the recipient of the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches’ Community Leader of the Year Award. In an announcement in the immediate aftermath of Dreyfoos’ passing, the Dreyfoos School of the Arts Foundation summed up his legacy best: “His visionary gifts have helped cultivate arts and culture in Palm Beach County and positively impacted the lives of thousands of students attending Dreyfoos School of the Arts. Mr. Dreyfoos will be greatly missed, but his legacy will live on forever, thanks to his generous contributions to Palm Beach County.”