The University of Pennsylvania has announced a $2.5 million gift from alumni Keith L. Sachs and his wife, Katherine Stein, in support of new faculty and fine arts programs at the UPenn School of Design.

The gift will be used to increase the impact of the visual arts across the university and in the local arts community, as well as to encourage collaboration among departments and centers at Penn. Among other things, the gift will endow the Keith L. and Katherine S. Sachs Endowed Visiting Professorship in the Fine Arts and will help strengthen ties between the School of Design, the Department of the History of Art, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Contemporary Art. It also will support the creation of the Keith L. and Katherine S. Sachs Fine Arts Program Fund, which will be used to develop innovative programming that appeals to a wide audience and helps to attract highly-regarded visiting faculty.

Sachs — CEO of Saxco International LLC, a packing material distributor for North American alcoholic beverage companies — serves as chairman of the School of Design board of overseers, while his wife sits on the university's board of trustees and the ICA board of overseers. The Sachses are longtime supporters of Penn, having funded the Sachs Professorship in Contemporary Art in the Department of History of Art and the Sachs Guest Curator Program at the ICA.

"Keith and Kathy Sachs have chosen to support two of the highest priorities for PennDesign — faculty support and programming — in a critically important department, Fine Arts, and we are grateful for their generosity," said University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann. "Their gift highlights the importance of integration across the university, strengthening ties across schools, and raising the visibility of the visual arts. It is especially fitting that they have done so in a way that highlights the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship, which is one of Penn's unique strengths."