In 2022, we will see a shift in how major philanthropists support institutions, as they turn away from memorialising their reputations and look towards creating sustainable cultural and social impacts.
Naming rights have long been a mainstay of museum development strategies. The opportunity to name a wing of a museum or an entire building can be a compelling incentive for many large donors. However, the social upheavals of the past two years and the climate crisis have challenged this proposition. As the very future of the Earth on which monuments stand becomes less certain, ideas of immortality feel out of touch.
Increasingly, major donors are creating impact in the here and now. In 2021, Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott broke the mould for philanthropy, making gifts totalling $2.7 billion (£1.9bn) to cause-driven organisations throughout the US, of which $266m went to the arts. (Scott is a signatory of the Giving Pledge, and will aim to give away much of her fortune.) By contrast, the budget of the US National Endowment of the Arts totalled $167.5m in 2021.
Not only were many of the beneficiaries lesser known, but Scott urged the media to focus attention on their missions rather than on herself. Certainly, people are talking about her – as I am right now – but people are also talking about Self Help Graphics & Art, an experimental Chicana/o printmaking studio east of Downtown Los Angeles founded in the 1970s; Souls Grown Deep, an Atlanta foundation supporting Black artists from the South; and The Laundromat Project, a community arts centre in a former laundromat in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Scott has validated their work and readied them to attract a new echelon of donors. She has stepped out of the limelight to allow them to shine.
Her choice to do this reflects a confidence that their message will in turn become a part of hers. As Scott said in a blog post published in June 2021, “putting large donors at the centre of stories on social progress is a distortion of their role… we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.”
Next year, we will see the philanthropic apparatus change even more. Instead of the “selfie mode” of patronage that focuses attention on the donor, charitable giving will become more photojournalistic, where the donor artfully disappears into the causes they support. This is not something that is taking place overnight. Increasingly, we are seeing major donors choose to name museum programmes rather than buildings. These often topical or thematic collaborations instead become platforms for donors to share expertise and success from their own fields with arts organisations.
I believe my fellow art-museum leaders will welcome this change as much as I do. Our job is to empower artists, and one particularly timely reason for this is because artists can tell stories that bring people closer together. Now more than ever, we must relearn ways to live in communion with our neighbours and our environments, rather than in conflict. Society has much to learn from the intrepid patrons who are creating impact in the world by amplifying artists’ voices.
Get more expert predictions for the year ahead. The WIRED World in 2022 features intelligence and need-to-know insights sourced from the smartest minds in the WIRED network. Available now on newsstands, as a digital download, or you can order your copy online.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
