David Rockefeller, chairman emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art, said yesterday that he had pledged $100 million toward its endowment - the biggest cash gift ever given to the museum.

Mr. Rockefeller said the gift was intended to shore up public programs at the Modern, which just completed an ambitious $858 million expansion that more than doubled its size.

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Mr. Rockefeller noted that the Modern's last fund-raising campaign centered on construction and acquisitions, rather than on helping to expand the endowment to pay for the museum's programs and education.

Mr. Rockefeller has watched the museum grow from its inception. His mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, founded the Modern with her friends Lizzie P. Bliss and Mary Sullivan at a time when few people took modern art seriously. The museum was first housed in rented space in the Heckscher Building at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street and later in a town house on West 53rd Street and other buildings, many of them Rockefeller homes.

"My own interest in art was because of my mother," Mr. Rockefeller said. "My father didn't like contemporary art, so he didn't give her large sums to spend. So she began buying prints and drawings. During my school days I remember sitting in on many of the early meetings."

Over the years Mr. Rockefeller has been a major benefactor, giving or pledging works of art as well as cash. For the recent $858 million capital campaign, he donated $77 million in cash. In his lifetime he will have given either cash or pledges totaling $200 million, excluding 17 artworks - some promised, others given - that include paintings by Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso and drawings by Cézanne and Picasso.