Members of the Quadracci family have pledged $10 million to the Milwaukee Art Museum to create an endowment for the long-term care of the Quadracci Pavilion, the winged lakefront building that has defined the city's skyline since it opened in 2001. The fund will generate annual income to maintain the pavilion's defining features, above all the movable Burke Brise Soleil wings overlooking Lake Michigan.

The pavilion, named for Betty and Harry Quadracci, who gave $10 million in the 1990s to build it, was the first building in the United States by Spanish-Swiss architect Santiago Calatrava. It holds an exhibition space, reception hall and auditorium, and the gift arrives during a yearlong celebration of its 25th anniversary that began in August. There are reported to be no immediate structural problems; the endowment is about stewardship, not repair.

The donors are the couple's four children: Joel Quadracci, chairman and chief executive of the family company Quad; Kathryn Quadracci, chief executive of QuadMed and president of the Windhover Foundation; Elizabeth Quadracci Harned, president of the Winderful Foundation; and H. Richard Quadracci, who died in the summer of 2026. Joel Quadracci, also a museum trustee, is reported as saying his parents believed Milwaukee deserved a building that would make people stop and look up, and that caring for it is what will make it last for the next generation.

The gift is the first major donation secured by director Kim Sajet, the former National Portrait Gallery director who joined the museum just over a year ago. She is reported as saying the pavilion's opening expressed belief in what art could make possible for Milwaukee, and that the family's generosity carries that civic leadership forward.