Epstein Data Wiki

Eileen Guggenheim

Properties2
tagsperson, art, new-york-academy-of-art, scholarship, correspondence, 2012, 2017
aliasesEileen Guggenheim, Guggenheim, Eileen

9 min read

⚠ what this page is about, and what it is not

A New York Academy of Art figure who corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein between 2012 and 2017, and who in December 2014 promised to “scout the school” for an artist to paint inside his house. Epstein funded a portrait scholarship at the Academy and tracked whether its recipients followed up with him. ⚠⚠ No student, scholarship recipient or artist is named on this page, and none will be. No allegation against her was found anywhere in the release, and none is made here.

WhoEileen Guggenheim. An FBI record of September 2007 gives her as “current Chairman of the New York Academy of Arts(NYAA) board”1
In the release215 documents, 230 pages, 1.07 pages per document2
Her own messages27 sender rows, 22 May 2012 to 25 October 20172
⭐ The actOn 18 December 2014 she wrote to Epstein that she had “forgotten to find an Academy artist for you to paint the entranceway of your house”, and promised: “I will scout the school and get ideas from the Dean and come up with some great choices for a commission.”3
⚠ Interviewed by the FBIOn 6 September 2007, in the federal investigation into Epstein, she was interviewed by the FBI at West Palm Beach, telephonically, with her husband and an Assistant United States Attorney present. ⚠ Being interviewed is not an allegation and none is made here1
⚠ And Epstein’s reply”thanks , but also know that the portrait scholarship receivers have been very very lax in follow up. very,”3

Eileen Guggenheim wrote to Jeffrey Epstein warmly and intermittently across five years. The documents that matter are about the New York Academy of Art: an artist to be found for his house, and a scholarship he was funding whose recipients he expected to hear from.

December 2014

The whole exchange is on one sheet, read at the image.3

She wrote at 10:57 AM:

Dear Jeffrey, Happy holidays! I am writing because I feel guilty- I have forgotten to find an Academy artist for you to paint the entranceway of your house. I promise in the New Year I will scout the school and get ideas from the Dean and come up with some great choices for a commission. Hav fun in the sun ( I imagine)! All the Best, Eileen

Epstein replied the same afternoon:

thanks , but also know that the portrait scholarship receivers have been very very lax in follow up. very,

⚠⚠ TWO THINGS ARE DOCUMENTED HERE AND THE PAGE ASSERTS NOTHING BEYOND THEM. First, a person connected to an art school undertook to go through that school to find an artist to work inside Epstein’s house, in December 2014, more than six years after his Florida conviction. Second, Epstein was funding something called a portrait scholarship at that school, and considered its recipients to owe him follow-up.

⚠ What the sheet does not say: who any recipient was, what follow-up meant, whether an artist was ever found, or what the scholarship’s terms were. No document read for this page answers any of those, and the page does not guess at them.

What else the correspondence shows

It is mostly friendly and slight. In May 2012 she wrote about his trip to China and thanked him for coming to something; in January 2014 she told Lesley Groff she would “check in at the school” and be “up to speed when I speak with Jeffrey”.4 ⚠ Her messages reach Epstein both directly and forwarded by his assistant, which is how much of this population exists.

The allegation this page does not make

Reporting outside this corpus, by Artnet, has described a dinner at Epstein’s New Mexico ranch attended by former Academy students and hosted by Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Guggenheim. ⚠⚠ THAT IS A PUBLISHED ALLEGATION FROM A NEWS SOURCE AND IT IS NOT IN THE DOCUMENTS READ FOR THIS PAGE. It is recorded here at that tier, attributed, and no detail of it is reproduced, because the people said to have attended are potential complainants and this page will not carry material that could identify them.5

⚠ The desk has not attempted to corroborate it from the corpus, and says so rather than implying a check it did not run.

What the 215 documents are

A count this size has been an artefact three times on this wiki, so the shape was measured first.2

  • 230 pages across 215 documents, 1.07 pages per document. Not a running head.
  • ⚠⚠ The surname is contaminated by an institution. Guggenheim also returns the Guggenheim Museum, whose mailing list appears in Epstein’s inbox: “Art After Dark: Halloween”, “Young Collectors Party”, “GIG Pre-Party”. Those are not her and are excluded from her 27 sender rows, which are the rows under her own name.

What this page does not say

No allegation against her was found anywhere in the release.6

⚠ Nothing here says she knew of Epstein’s offences, or that any artist or scholarship recipient came to harm. The documents show an institutional relationship and a funded scholarship, and a reader should not read more into them than they carry.

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. The FBI interview, 6 September 2007. EFTA01689427 viewer p.20, read at the image at 700 dpi; a duplicate copy is at viewer p.22 of the same run. An FD-302, date of transcription 09/11/2007, investigation on 09/06/2007 at West Palm Beach, Florida, “(telephonically)”, file 31E-MM-108062-138. It opens: “Pursuant to a federal investigation regarding the sexual exploitation of minors, Eileen Guggenheim was interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI).” Present were her husband, Russell Wilkinson, and an Assistant United States Attorney whose name is covered on the sheet and is not supplied. ⚠⚠ A WITNESS INTERVIEW IS NOT AN ALLEGATION. The form’s own footer states that it “contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI”, and nothing in it attributes any wrongdoing to her. ⚠⚠ THE 302 CONTINUES PAST THE END OF THIS PAGE INTO MATERIAL ABOUT A THIRD PARTY, AND THIS PAGE DOES NOT REPRODUCE IT OR CHARACTERISE IT. The file is a child-exploitation investigation, that person’s status is undetermined, and the survivor rule governs: nothing that could identify or describe her appears here. ⚠ An earlier version of this page said the release did not state her title. It does, on this sheet, as of 2007. The desk published that page without having found this document, and the correction is recorded rather than quietly folded in.

    What the 302 records about the Academy, all of it institutional: she met Epstein through NYAA functions in the 1990s, when she was “lecturing and working with student services at the NYAA”; Epstein was an NYAA board member in the 1980s into the early 1990s and allowed board meetings at his apartment and at his office in the Villard House, corner of Madison Avenue and 53rd Street; he “attended NYAA parties and supported the school financially but he was not considered to be part of the ‘inner cirle.’” (as printed); she estimated his contributions at $5,000 to $20,000 per year; and “Epstein showed no particular interest in any type of art.” Her husband told the agents that the school’s founder, Stuart Pivar, “got out of hand” and was not re-elected to the board, and opined that Epstein resigned because Pivar, his main contact there, had gone. ↩ ↩2

  2. The measurement. "Eileen Guggenheim" returns 215 documents across 230 pages, 1.07 pages per document. ⚠ The hinge is page scope: pages_fts indexes pages and a document counts when any one page carries the phrase. In the e-mail metadata store, 27 rows are under her own name, running 22 May 2012 to 25 October 2017. ⚠⚠ The bare surname is NOT usable for this subject: it also returns the Guggenheim Museum’s event mailings, which sit in Epstein’s inbox and are a different sender entirely. No surname-based figure appears on this page. ⚠ No deduplicated message total is stated. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. 18 December 2014. EFTA02088043 p.1, read at the image at 700 dpi. Her message is timed December 18, 2014 at 10:57:00 AM EST and reaches Epstein forwarded by Lesley Groff at 12:51 PM; Epstein’s reply is headed Thur 12/18/2014 5:21:51 PM. ⚠ The typo “Hav fun”, the double spaces and the trailing comma in “very,” are as printed. ⚠ Her address and Epstein’s are both covered on this sheet and neither is supplied. ⚠ The sheet’s confidentiality legend is Epstein’s own, naming him as its owner. Copies of the same December 2014 traffic appear at EFTA02086868, EFTA02088480, EFTA02087681, EFTA02087927, EFTA02087083, EFTA00356353 and others; they were not separately rendered and nothing on this page rests on them. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. The rest of the correspondence. The May 2012 message about his China trip is EFTA02025762 p.1, text layer, not read at the image, forwarded to Epstein by Lesley Groff. The January 2014 exchange in which she writes “Let me check in at the school” and “I just want to be up to speed when I speak with Jeffrey” is EFTA00375758 p.1, text layer, not read at the image. ⚠ A third party is named in that message and is not reproduced here, because nothing on this page turns on them. ↩

  5. The ranch dinner, and why it is on this page only as an attributed allegation. The account is Artnet’s, published outside this corpus, and describes former New York Academy of Art students at Epstein’s New Mexico ranch. ⚠⚠ It is not corroborated from the release here and no attempt to corroborate it was made for this draft. It is recorded because omitting a published allegation about the subject would leave the page misleading, and it is reported at credible-allegation tier, attributed to its source, with no participant named and no detail reproduced. ⚠ The students are potential complainants and the survivor rule governs: nothing that could identify any of them appears here, and nothing will be added from the corpus without a status determination first. ↩

  6. Absences, each scoped. No allegation against her was found in the release read for this page. ⚠ That is a narrow statement: the desk searched her name and read her own messages, and did not run a systematic adverse sweep over the 215 documents, did not search the six derived stores, and did not open the Guggenheim Museum traffic at all. ⚠⚠ This is a thinner absence check than this desk’s standard and it is stated rather than dressed up. ↩

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