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The Carlos Slim Health Institute has spent about
$20 million since 2001 on organ transplants in Mexico, a nation with one of the lowest rates in Latin America for organ donations after death.
It’s a philanthropy born of personal tragedy. Slim’s wife, Soumaya, died of kidney disease after getting a kidney transplant, and in 2008 his son Patrick was diagnosed with kidney disease. His brother Carlos gave him one of his kidneys. In a separate case, Slim’s daughter Vanessa donated a kidney to her brother Marco Antonio. The family now campaigns for organ donation and has funded 7,100 transplants in the past decade.As evidenced by the works of American artist Conrad Wise Chapman hanging on the walls in his office at Grupo Financiero Inbursa and the private art gallery with the small Rodin sculptures just a short walk down the hallway, Slim is passionate about art. He opened a huge new museum in March last year, the Museo Soumaya, a strikingly undulating, mirrored building designed by his son-in-law architect Fernando Romero. (He proudly points out that the tie he wears sports a tasteful, repeated pattern of a small replica of the museum.) It showcases some 3,400 of the 64,000 pieces of art Slim has collected. He beams as he recounts the total number of visitors to date (650,000) and the fact that many are from schools and low-income groups or are people with disabilities. He is doing his part to educate and enlighten his countrymen.
Entrance is free, and the crowds lined up outside before the 10:30 a.m. opening on a balmy late January morning. Inside, the building’s circular walkways connecting one floor to another are somewhat reminiscent of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. But the eclectic collection—from Rodin and Dalí sculptures, old Mexican coins and Thomas Edison’s first phonograph to Matisse paintings and Diego Rivera murals—makes for an almost overwhelming mix. This is the collection of a man whose curiosities, and whose wallet, know few limits.
Follow me on Twitter at @KerryDolan
source: forbes.com
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