Paul J. Sachs
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Paul Joseph Sachs (November 24, 1878 – February 18, 1965) was an American investor, businessman and museum director. Sachs served as associate director of the Fogg Art Museum and as a partner in the financial firm
Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...
. He is recognized for having developed one of the earliest museum studies courses in the United States.


Biography

Sachs was born to a
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family, the eldest son of Louisa (née Goldman) and
Samuel Sachs Samuel Sachs (; July 28, 1851 – March 2, 1935) was an American investment banker. Early life Samuel Sachs was born on July 28, 1851 in Maryland, the son of Sophie (née Baer) and Joseph Sachs, both Jewish immigrants from Bavaria, Germany. He h ...
. His father having been a partner of the investment firm
Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...
, and his mother, the daughter of the firm's founder Marcus Goldman. He attended the Sachs School, which was founded by his uncle Julius Sachs and which later became the
Dwight School Dwight School is an independent college preparatory school located on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Dwight offers the International Baccalaureate curriculum to students ages two through grade twelve. History Founded in 1872 by Julius Sachs as ...
. He then continued his education at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, where he graduated in 1900. As an undergraduate, Sachs collected
prints In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserve ...
and drawings with classmate Edward Waldo Forbes, who would eventually become director of
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
's
Fogg Museum of Art The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
in 1909. After graduating, Sachs went to work in the family business, becoming a partner in 1904. Sachs had been making donations to the Fogg since 1911, then only a small art collection consisting mostly of out-of-fashion American paintings and primitive Italian works. In 1912, Sachs was appointed to the museum's Visiting Committee. Two years later, Forbes persuaded Sachs to leave his family business to become an assistant curator, despite Sachs having no curatorial background. Sachs spent that summer in Italy seeing as much art as possible before his arrival at Harvard in the autumn of 1915. Sachs began lecturing in
art history Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...
from 1916 to 1917 at
Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...
where he had been appointed "Lecturer in Art." He was made an assistant professor in the Fine Arts department at Harvard in 1917. In 1922, he began his innovative course on museum curatorship titled "Fine Arts 15a: Museum Work and Museum Problems.", dealing with both curatorial and financial aspects of running a museum. He was appointed full professor in 1927. Sachs set about developing a program of museum education, developing students as what he termed the "connoisseur-scholar." One course was commonly called "the Print Course," which featured a seminar-style analysis of prints and drawings drawn largely from Sachs' own personal collection. From 1935 onward, he served regularly as chair of the Fine Arts department. In 1929, Sachs became one of seven founding members of the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
and gave it its first drawing, a
George Grosz George Grosz (; born Georg Ehrenfried Groß; July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objec ...
portrait of the artist's mother. During World War II, Sachs, along with disciple
George L. Stout George Leslie Stout (October 5, 1897 – July 1, 1978) was an American art conservation specialist and museum director who founded the first laboratory in the United States to study art conservation, as well as the first journal on the subject of ...
, was one of the people who developed plans to safeguard American works of art during the war, and one who set in motion the task force (later known as the
Monuments Men A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, hist ...
) of American military officers who rescued European art and architecture during the war. In 1945, Sachs retired together from Fogg, while he remained on the teaching faculty of Harvard until 1948 when he was named a professor emeritus.


Personal life and death

In 1904, he married Meta Pollak; they remained married until her death on December 25, 1960. They had three daughters: Elizabeth Pollak Weiss, Celia Robinson Stillwell (married to Charles Alexander Robinson, Jr., and after his death to Richard Stillwell), and Marjorie Pickhardt Wilson. Sachs died in February 1965.


Legacy

Many of Sachs' students would go on to become leading figures in the fields of museum and art including
Chick Austin Arthur Everett "Chick" Austin Jr. (December 18, 1900 – March 29, 1957) was the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum from 1927 through 1944. Austin persisted in the introduction of then-modern theater and modern design and especially contemporane ...
,
Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. (January 28, 1902 – August 15, 1981) was an American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. From that position, he was one of the most influential forces in the development of ...
, Frederick B. Deknatel, Sydney Joseph Freedberg,
George M.A. Hanfmann George Maxim Anossov Hanfmann (born November 1911, in St. Petersburg, Russia; died March 13, 1986, in Watertown, Massachusetts) was a famous archaeologist and scholar of ancient Mediterranean art. Biography He studied at the University of Jena und ...
, Julien Levy,
Henry Plumer McIlhenny Henry Plumer McIlhenny (October 7, 1910 – May 11, 1986) was an American connoisseur of art and antiques, world traveler, socialite, philanthropist, curator and chairman of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Early life and art collections During hi ...
,
Agnes Mongan Agnes Mongan (January 21, 1905 – September 15, 1996) was an American art historian, who served as a curator and director for the Harvard Art Museums. Career Mongan received her B.A. in 1927 from Bryn Mawr College with a degree art history and E ...
,
Walter Pach Walter Pach (July 1, 1883 – November 27, 1958) was an artist, critic, lecturer, art adviser, and art historian who wrote extensively about modern art and championed its cause. Through his numerous books, articles, and translations of European ar ...
,
Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Joseph Pulitzer III (May 13, 1913 – May 26, 1993) was an American newspaperman and publisher of the '' St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' for 38 years. A grandson of the famous newsman Joseph Pulitzer, for 31 years he chaired the board which was responsib ...
,
Perry T. Rathbone Perry Townsend Rathbone (July 3, 1911- January 22, 2000) was one of the leading American art museum directors of the 20th century. As director of the St. Louis Art Museum from 1940–1955, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from 1955–1972, he ...
, and
James Rorimer James Joseph Rorimer (September 7, 1905 – May 11, 1966), was an American museum curator and former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was a primary force behind the creation of the Cloisters, a branch of the museum dedicated t ...
.


Honors

* honorary Doctorate from
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
: 1942


See also

* Goldman–Sachs family


References


External links


Frick profile
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sachs, Paul J. 1878 births 1965 deaths American people of German-Jewish descent Harvard University alumni Harvard University faculty Wellesley College faculty American art curators Monuments men Businesspeople from New York City