Arts bodies look to US in search of funding
It looked so easy. Tate Modern waltzed into New York, hosted a dinner attended by some of the most iconic figures in North American art and came away with $1.5m (£750,000). The rest of the British arts world looked on with envy.
Last week’s dinner was without doubt the biggest and most high-profile fundraising event ever held outside the UK on behalf of a British arts organisation. It brought together not just leading American artists such as Jeff Koons and Ellsworth Kelly, but the Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helu, reputedly the world’s second richest man, as well as Calvin Klein from the world of fashion and Lady Lynn Forester of the Rothschild dynasty.
Tate Modern’s US fundraising success illustrated how more attuned wealthy Americans are to giving to the arts than the British. It also showed how sophisticated UK arts organisations have become in tapping American cash. Many now have permanent offices in the US. Even those who cannot easily take their work there, such as Glyndebourne Festival Opera, have American friends organisations that raise up to £100,000 a year – a significant contribution to their work.
Read full article (Financial Times, September 21, 2007)
Note: this is an important part of the article for institutions in the Netherlands:
As a result, despite the recent decline of the dollar against sterling, the value of the US currency has been rising in the UK arts world. The key, says Sir Nicholas Serota, Tate Modern’s director and architect of its US fundraising success, is the American culture of giving. “People who have made money there are expected to give some of it back to society. We need to develop that culture in the UK if our arts are to prosper, because state subsidy is not going to increase.”
This goes as much for the Netherlands as it goes for England. Although there are examples in theatre with the patron Joop van den Ende and Joop van Caldenborgh, more wealthy people should feel more responsible for the fate of art if it is to survive the drawback of state funding.
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