NEW YORK.- Philip Albert Straus, a retired New York investment banker, financier and patron of the arts and education, died on Feb. 4 in Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut. He was 88 and lived in Mamaroneck, N.Y. The cause was complications after surgery, his family said.

 Mr. Straus spent more than 50 years with the firm of Neuberger & Berman. He was a friend and one of the original partners of Roy Neuberger, whom he joined in the business in 1947.

He specialized in managing the portfolios of clients and played a key role in building the company into a leading investment management firm. He retired in 1998 as a senior partner from what has since become Neuberger Berman, a Lehman Brothers Company.

 Mr. Straus was a noted collector of art, particularly of the works of Edvard Munch. Knowledgeable about prints and art conservation, he gave money in 1928 to established a technical laboratory for art restoration at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard. Through the Philip and Lynn Straus Foundation, formed in the late 1950’s, he and his wife supported libraries, civil rights, human services and education. They were life trustees of Bank Street College, where Lynn Straus received a graduate degree in 1947. In 2001 they gave the college $7 million, its largest private donation. He was a 1933 graduate of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. He supported the Museum of Modern Art; the National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families in Washington; the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services; and UJA-Federation of New York.

 He was born in Manhattan and graduated in 1936 from Harvard. In World War II, he served with the Army Air Force in Italy. Besides his wife of 54 years, Lynn Gross Straus, Mr. Straus is survived by two sons, Philip Jr. of Philadelphia and Donald R. of Cambridge, Mass.; a daughter, Katherine B. Straus of Santa Fe, N.M.; and four grandchildren.