[1] As an undergraduate, Sachs collected prints and drawings with classmate Edward Waldo Forbes, who would eventually become director of Harvard University's Fogg Museum of Art in 1909.

Sachs had been making donations to the Fogg since 1911, then only a small art collection consisting mostly of out-of-fashion American paintings and primitive Italian works.

In 1929, Sachs became one of seven founding members of the Museum of Modern Art and gave it its first drawing, a George Grosz portrait of the artist's mother.

Many of Sachs' students would go on to become leading figures in the fields of museum and art including Chick Austin, Alfred H. Barr Jr., Frederick B. Deknatel, Sydney Joseph Freedberg, George M.A.

Hanfmann, Julien Levy, Henry Plumer McIlhenny, Agnes Mongan, Walter Pach, Joseph Pulitzer Jr., Perry T. Rathbone, and James Rorimer.