Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic In 2019, the National Portrait Gallery in London declined a £1mn grant from the Sackler Trust, becoming the first major museum to reject publicly funding from the family, whose pharmaceutical company Purdue produced the highly addictive opioid OxyContin. Art institutions in London, New York and Paris followed suit, and the name of the philanthropists, once lauded for lavishing millions on museums, was scrubbed from their walls.The repudiation of the Sacklers followed a protest campaign orchestrated by the photographer Nan Goldin, part of a wave of activism that has swept through museums in recent years to challenge every aspect of their operations, from the sources of their funding to the diversity of their employees and the art they hold and acquire and display. Protesters have called for the return of works to their countries of origin, divestment from the fossil fuel industry, and the severance of ties with philanthropists connected to the defence industry or Israel. The fallout has led to the resignation of board members and the departure of donors.The attention on philanthropists continues to catch museums out. For instance, the National Portrait Gallery, praised by activists when it rejected Sackler money, and again, in 2022, when it decided not to seek renewal of BP’s sponsorship of its annual portrait prize, recently found itself embroiled in a controversy over its display of photographs by Zoë Law. She is the former wife of Caxton hedge fund manager Andrew Law whose family trust had made a donation towards the institution’s refurbishment, leading to accusations of nepotism. (The gallery said that it followed its processes “as outlined in our grants and donations policy, which are designed to ensure due diligence” and that its ethics committee was “consulted and agreed the donation from The Law Family Charitable Foundation” and was “aware of the display” of Zoë Law’s work.)Who would want to be a museum patron today? Is the heightened scrutiny putting donors off? “I do think the protests are a deterrent,” says Leslie Ramos, a philanthropy adviser and speaker at a Tefaf summit on private funding of the arts on March 17. “There is concern about reputational damage. I see many museum supporters choosing to give anonymously.”Other prospective benefactors, particularly younger ones, share some of the activists’ concerns. “The era of just writing a cheque is over,” says Ramos. “Even if people do give money, they want to know precisely how their money is being spent and who are the audiences that will benefit from it. They are asking more questions and are not just taking for granted what institutions tell them.”Museums, too, are more careful about accepting money than they once were. “Due diligence procedures are a lot better today than they were a few years ago, and caution has been key since the Sackler situation,” says Christian Levett, a retired hedge fund manager and collector who has given money to support more than 40 exhibitions at Tate, the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, among others, over the past 15 years. “These issues are now discussed at every level of institutions.” Levett also served as a trustee of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford for two terms, retiring from the board last autumn.The tendency now is for museums to err on the side of caution, says Levett. “If you’re being offered money from someone who invests in property deals in east Africa or central Asia, for example, the level of scrutiny required might go well beyond anything that an art institution is capable of. Naturally institutions need the money. However, the last thing they want is a donation turning into a potential disaster which could cost them an unnecessary fortune in time and legal fees.”The thorny questions museums are grappling with “do not always have easy answers”, says Wim Pijbes, former director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and also a speaker at the Tefaf summit. For instance, accepting money from the tobacco industry is illegal for museums in the Netherlands, says Pijbes, who is now director of the Droom en Daad foundation in Rotterdam. But what if the retired chief executive of a tobacco company offers you money? “Would you prevent employees of tobacco firms from becoming museum friends or patrons? Where do you draw the line?”Despite these challenges, museums need private money now more than ever. Public funding for culture has been steadily declining across most of Europe for more than a decade, according to a 2024 report by the University of Warwick and Campaign for the Arts; the after-effects of pandemic lockdowns are still being felt, and inflation and energy costs are biting hard. Simultaneously, some large institutions are trying to raise huge sums for major infrastructure projects — the Louvre in Paris is embarking on a revamp which will include a new entrance, restructured galleries and relocation of the Mona Lisa to its own room, at an estimated cost of €700mn-€800mn, while the British Museum in London needs to find a staggering £1bn for its masterplan, which includes the construction of a new suite of galleries on its western side (designed by Lina Ghotmeh) to replace the dilapidated spaces currently housing its Greek, Assyrian and Egyptian masterpieces.The good news is that, despite the heightened scrutiny from activists, benefactors and institutions, “we are still seeing new philanthropists emerge from diverse backgrounds, both geographically and in terms of the sectors in which they made their money,” says Victoria & Albert Museum director Tristram Hunt. One of the most significant to emerge in recent years is the London-based Chinese hedge fund manager Yan Huo, 56, who has made generous donations to museums in the past two years. Through his family foundation, Huo, who earned a PhD in electrical engineering at Princeton University, has given $75mn to education, the arts and science, of which £15.7mn has gone to museums and galleries. This includes $10mn to the Metropolitan Museum towards the renovation of its modern and contemporary art wing and, in London since 2023, £800,000 to the Courtauld Gallery; £775,000 to the National Gallery; £625,000 each to the British Museum and Tate; £500,000 to the Natural History Museum; £475,000 to the V&A; £350,000 to the Royal Academy; £250,000 to the National Portrait Gallery and £200,000 to the Science Museum, according to figures supplied by his foundation — all to fund specific exhibitions.One sector which remains largely untapped is the tech industry (though such donors would not be without controversy). The challenge for museums is that tech entrepreneurs and workers like to have data to quantify the impact of their giving. But there isn’t much available here — exhibition visitor figures can tell you how many people saw a show but not what kind of experience they had. And how do you quantify the transformational effect a museum visit can have on a young person’s life? “I don’t have much faith in tech supporting the arts,” says Ramos. “I don’t really see that shift happening.” Hunt is more optimistic. While he believes museums can do more to make their case for support from tech donors, some are already “giving generously to education and outreach programmes and the data-heavy areas that museums can track”. Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies, for example, funds the V&A’s Mused, a website aimed at 10-14 year olds.Meanwhile, there is also continued support for museums from “philanthropic families in retail and banking such as the Westons, the Sainsburys and the Wolfsons, who have traditionally been very generous supporters of the arts and still are”, says Hunt. In 1991, the Sainsburys gave £40mn (equivalent to £90mn today) to the National Gallery for the construction of a new wing for early Renaissance paintings. Now, they’ve contributed £10mm through two family trusts for its revamp as part of the museum’s bicentenary celebrations. It reopens to the public in May.Anh Nguyen, director of development at the National Gallery, spearheaded the £95mn fundraising campaign for the museum’s bicentenary capital projects and related programming. She does not believe the task, now successfully completed, was any harder than it would have been a few years ago. “It’s always difficult whatever the climate. It’s a challenging profession.” The key is to take the long view, says Nguyen, citing the establishment of a Young Ambassadors programme (for those aged 20-45) at the museum in 2021. For an annual contribution of £1,200, patrons gain access to events such as behind-the-scenes tours, specialist talks and intergenerational social gatherings where they can mingle with the institution’s long-established benefactors. The museum now has 110 young patrons. “A couple of them have already made multi-year, six-figure donations because they’ve developed their own personal relationship to the National Gallery,” says Nguyen. “We engage with benefactors at an early stage of their journey. It’s about getting them young.”Tefaf Summit, March 17, tefaf.com
