Funding matters

Museums in the firing line as UK council funding crisis bites

Local authorities in England are taking drastic action, including scrapping all funding for museums, leading some experts to argue that new funding models are the only way to survive

Kabul culture project in limbo as Germany withdraws funding

The German government has pulled out from the Kabul Riverfront Transformation project, which was to modernise parts of the city's historic centre and install an art gallery

Arts Council England's £446m grants: who are the biggest winners and losers?

The announcement signalled a shift of resources away from London, a broader range of venues beyond traditional art museums and an overall reduction in real terms

British Council workers strike over planned cuts that could reduce arts team by up to 20%

The UK’s international organisation for cultural relations has been subject to a number of cost-reduction exercises in the past year amid a massive funding shortfall

Freelands Foundation awards £1.27m in diversity funding—including Windrush education programme

The move follows the foundation's launch of a diversity action plan which aims to stamp out racial inequality in the visual arts

Comment: The Tate should take BP’s money—and ask for more

Protests about the gallery’s lack of transparency concerning the energy company's sponsorship miss the point of how big business and the arts interact

May 2013archive

Starry night for Tate in New York: celebrity friends help museum fundraise in style

Sarah Jessica Parker and the mysterious Tate Americas Foundation raise money for Latin American acquisitions

April 2012archive

Pompidou at war with its US donors

The president of the Paris museum and chairman of its American fundraisers go head to head over expense of India show and how it raises cash in the US

UK Treasury rules to stop museums spending donors' cash

National institutions reluctantly set up trusts to gain access to their own reserves

Vanity, vanity: the problems facing China’s private museums

Spaces bloom and then wither as founders’ commitment quickly fades

US art sponsorship suffering after economic crisis, survey shows

Corporate giving down 14% over three years according to Business Committee for the Arts

Is the symbiosis between corporations and the arts an outmoded tradition?

Investment in art has become less popular among US companies when more commercial options are available

French institutions have lost their integrity by relying on private sponsors, leading fundraiser says

Longtime arts and heritage patron Olivier de Rohan denounces the increasing influence of external bodies on museums' creative decisions

May 2009archive

Chicago's industrialist benefactors built the city’s art collections—but can today’s patrons maintain them?

So far the next generation have yet to replicate their parents’ efforts on the same scale

UK museums manage dearth of exhibition sponsorship in the wake of economic downturn

Institutions must grit their teeth and hope for the intervention of private investors, as several large shows are going ahead without corporate sponsors

April 2008archive

Pompidou cancels Calder exhibition for lack of funds—and renovations are also delayed

The French gallery has been hit hard by a 6% reduction in government subsidy, part of Sarkozy's pledge to modernise the State by reducing public spending

Comment: The problem with privately-funded museums

There is a danger that the conservatism of the museum sector will be challenged by a new generation of board members who feel that “rules are for other people”

May 2007archive

Seattle Art Museum gets $1bn worth of art from 'incredibly devoted group of collectors'

The gift from 53 local patrons is one of the largest in the history of institutional donations

Albright-Knox sells the old to pay for the new

Sotheby's is auctioning 200 antiquities and pre-Modern works worth $15m from the US museum's collection to raise funds to purchase Modern and contemporary art

May 2006archive

As US museums face mounting legal issues, an annual conference explores what to do with whistleblowers and dodgy donors

Recent corporate scandals have raised concerns that American charities should be examining their ethics policies

Comment: New US museums pit donors against the public

An increasing number of museums are being built as speculative investments designed to attract incompatible currencies—collections and crowds

Louvre gets a taste of US sponsorship as Atlanta's High Museum pays $10m to borrow works by Raphael, Rembrandt and Velázquez

The money will restore the French museum's 18th-century decorative art galleries and the collaboration seeks to improve US-French relations in the wake of the Iraq War

Contemporary philanthropy: Conversations with Eli Broad, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Howard Rachofsky and David Rockefeller

Leading philanthropist-collectors gathered in Miami Beach to discuss their personal philosophies

Siberian billionaire funds $3m Hermitage exhibition tour

Industrialist Oleg Deripaska has become the Russian museum’s most generous private donor—even if his support is part of a public relations initiative

July 2005archive

Future of US museum sponsorship in question after split of tobacco giant Altria

The Whitney and the Brooklyn Museum could lose annual grants from the conglomerate, which gave $300m to charitable organisations over the past five years

March 2004archive

Are the culture wars over? White House proposes $18m increase to federal arts funding

The boost, which will send "American masterpieces" across the US, comes more than a decade after Congress threatened to abolish the NEA for financing "objectionable" works

July 2003archive

Fiat ends sponsorship of exhibitions at Palazzo Grassi

After 17 years and 15 shows, the Italian car manufacturer has withdrawn funding from major kunsthalle in Venice

March 2003archive

The Dulwich Picture Gallery organises sponsored walk to meet £100,000 shortfall in annual budget

Museum director will don Clarks shoes and fill his pockets with Kendal Mint cakes for the 150-mile trek

Negotiating a united front: Berlin's culture minister Christoph Stölzl takes on funding culture in the capital

It risked bankruptcy to become the capital, and a deal with the federal government gives Berlin DM100m a year—providing that plum institutions come under national control

How top British museums woo US donors

The Royal Academy, Tate, British Museum and National Gallery are all raising money successfully in the States, where 600,000 households report income exceeding $5m