In response to that rejection, on December 8, 1910, the Municipal Art Commission transformed itself into the Montclair Art Association and proposed to create and manage an art gallery without government support. Raising funds still proved difficult until another Montclair resident, Florence Rand Lang (1861–1943), agreed to bear most of the expense and her gift of $50,000, much of it for the purchase of the site, transformed the project from a gallery into a museum. She had arrived in Montclair from Massachusetts as a teenager in 1873. Her initial donation was the first of many that totaled more than $250,000 over the next thirty years, plus $200,000 in her will and more from her estate. She was heir to much of the Rand family fortune, amassed by her father Jasper Rand (1837–1909) and bachelor uncle Addison C. Rand (1841–1900), who together had founded Rand Drill Company in 1871.