In a sentence: In a philanthropic field long dominated by extraordinarily wealthy individual donors, some grantmakers and nonprofit leaders are boldly seeking change.
What’s going on
Public funding for the arts has been dwindling for decades in the United States, so most arts nonprofits rely on a mix of earned income and philanthropy. Major individual donors play an outsized role in philanthropy for visual art compared to other program areas, and their priorities substantially shape the field, we found in our State of American Philanthropy report.
This is creating some thorny situations as some arts nonprofit leaders and grantmakers seek to advance equity and social justice through and within arts organizations, while trustees and other major donors aren’t always on board for change.
The lion’s share of philanthropy for visual art goes to big-city museums. But the field of visual arts nonprofits also includes things like arts education, community arts centers, art conservation programs, and nonprofit galleries.
By the numbers
About 40% of the 500+ people who serve on the boards of America’s most popular art museums work in finance or derive their wealth from it, the New York Times reported in 2019
Four billionaires—David Geffen, Leon Black, Kenneth Griffin, and Steve Cohen—gave a combined total of $370 million to the Museum of Modern Art between 2014 and 2018. This amounts to nearly 45% of the total amount allocated by the top 10 institutional grantmakers for the visual arts in this period.
Art museums, galleries, and exhibits received 83% of grants for the visual arts from 2014 to 2018, according to Candid data.
Key funders
Alice Walton may be America’s most influential arts patron. Committed to increasing access to the arts, she founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the nonprofit Art Bridges, among other projects.
Other major donors in the field include Ronald Perelman (who gave $20 million to the Guggenheim), Fayez and Susan Sarofim ($70 million to expand the campus at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston), Michael Bloomberg, and Steve and Alexandra Cohen, among many others.
The top institutional grantmaker in this field from 2014 to 2018, per Candid data, was the Windgate Foundation, which prioritizes art education and craft art in Arkansas and the South. A regional focus is not uncommon in this field, with other top grantmakers like the Brown Foundation and the Lilly Endowment also giving primarily to arts organizations in their home regions. The Mellon and Rockefeller foundations are a couple of the key grantmakers for the arts with a national focus. The Kresge Foundation prioritizes “creative placemaking,” which emphasizes the importance of art, culture, and community-engaged design in community planning.
A few foundations make grants to support individual artists—notably the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation.
Artist-endowed foundations like the ones associated with Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, and Mike Kelley are a growing force. A 2019 report from the Aspen Institute found the value of artist-endowed foundation assets more than doubled from 2011 to 2015.
New and notable
Some foundations, like Ford, are actively supporting social justice initiatives at arts organizations. But some trustees and other major donors are withdrawing support from arts institutions they think are “rewriting the canon of art history,” in the words of one donor.
Eli Broad, who died last year, transformed downtown L.A. into a thriving cultural center through his philanthropy, with landmark projects including the Broad museum. Broad exemplified the promise and the peril of big philanthropy, David Callahan writes.
Billionaire museum trustees have drawn negative attention during the pandemic for failing to step up philanthropically to avert layoffs and sales of artworks. The LA Times art critic Christopher Knight wrote, “Time to start writing lots more checks, or time to step aside.”
The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation has launched an initiative to address climate change through cultural institutions.
In 2021, the Joan Mitchell Foundation announced a new program offering multiyear unrestricted funding to artists.
Food for thought
“There should be more direct funding to neighborhood-based cultural anchors…rather than funding toward large museum renovations.” — Prerana Reddy, program director at Blade of Grass, here.
Go Deeper