By a letter dated December 14, 2015, the Wertheim family publicly committed the majority of their wealth to benefit others. They did so by joining The Giving Pledge, a campaign organized by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage the wealthiest families in the world to commit their assets toward charitable endeavors. The Wertheim Family Foundation has been active for 50 years fulfilling their mission statement: Making Life on Earth Better. This commitment to continue using their assets t0 help others is the latest and largest commitment to date from a family which has already given extraordinary amounts of money and time.
Sydell Ida Wertheim Concert Organ
A gift from longtime FIU
philanthropist Dr. Herbert Wertheim, the Sydell Ida Wertheim Concert
Organ was custom-made by one of the country’s preeminent organ
builders, the Schantz Organ Company of Ohio.
Built in 1999 for nearly
$700,000, the 4,226-pipe Schantz organ is the crown jewel of the
Hebert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center’s 600-seat concert
hall and would cost millions of dollars to build today.
It took a year for the
26-ton organ, which is the largest in Miami-Dade County and one of the
most technologically advanced in the country, to be completed. It
features a solid-oak console with four manual keyboards and a pedal
clavier that controls its pipes.
The organ’s completion
earned FIU the cover photo of the October 1999 issue of the journal
The American Organist with an accompanying essay by Schantz Tonal
Director Jeffrey Dexter. In his essay, Dexter noted that Schantz
organs are typically built for churches, so Schantz relished the
opportunity to customize an organ for a university with a thriving
School of Music and outstanding concert hall.
“This instrument is unquestionably one of the finest concert organs to be found anywhere in the state of Florida,” Dexter wrote.
