NEW YORK — The estate of Geoffrey Beene has donated an initial commitment of $44 million to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for a research initiative to be known as the Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center.
News of the gift — one of the larger ones made to the hospital in recent years — was released Wednesday, one day shy of the second anniversary of the designer’s death. Beene died of complications from cancer at the age of 80.
The center will occupy several floors in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Building, the new 23-story research facility at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Essentially, the initial donation will be used toward programs and research and will help get advancements achieved in the research labs to clinic sites. Hospital executives declined to comment on the estate’s plans for additional financial commitments. G. Thompson Hutton, the estate’s executor, did not return phone calls Wednesday.
As a young man, Beene set out for a career in medicine, enrolling at Tulane University’s medical school. In a 2002 interview with WWD, the Louisiana native said he often was thrown out of lectures for sketching images of Joan Crawford, but anatomy class is what finally did him in. “Twenty-one cadavers in one room was the moment of truth for me,” he said. “But the thing I hated the most wound up being the basis of my career — the body.”
During a telephone interview Wednesday, Russell Nardozza, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Geoffrey Beene Inc., said, “He had a fascination with medicine and the human body — as evidenced in his clothes. His medical training and understanding of the human form helped derive the direction of his work.”
The MSKCC gift is not the only substantial one that has been made by Beene’s estate. Earlier this year the Animal Medical Center received a $10 million gift from the late fashion designer. The AMC is New York City’s largest facility for animal care, education and research, and is open around the clock every day of the year.
On another front, last year the Geoffrey Beene Scholarship Endowment was set up at YMA, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the apparel, design, retail and textile industries. The $1 million endowment from the late designer was the largest single gift in the YMA’s history.
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