Have ‘Naming’ Gifts Gone Too Far?

The Shakespeare Theater Company’s new $89-million home in Washington is festooned from floor to ceiling with the names of philanthropists who have donated money to the new facility, prompting a reviewer in The New York Times to wonder if it is all too much.

The facility, known as the Harman Center for the Arts, has at least seven lobbies, staircases, and other areas named for donors, plus two long lists of names of benefactors that run down the front of the building’s façade, with additional names etched into the glass balustrades of an upper level of the facility.

Pointing out that the practice is neither new nor limited to Washington (New York City is home to Carnegie Hall, named for Andrew Carnegie, and Avery Fisher and Alice Tully Halls, after all), the reviewer, Charles Isherwood, calls it the “graffiti of the philanthropic class.”

Some philanthropists are bucking the trend, Mr. Isherwood notes. When the dean at the University of Wisconsin at Madison School of Business found that he couldn’t persuade anyone to donate the $50-million needed to get his or her name on the school, he found philanthropists willing to chip in to ensure that the school would not be named for a donor for the next 20 years. The pool of donors who stepped up to back that goal eventually contributed $85-million.

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