Showing that philanthropy can work, even when times are tough

The UK's biggest art charity has announced plans to increase funding to museums and galleries to buy and show art by over 50% by 2014. The Art Fund is committing £7m a year to their funding programme, up from £4.5 million. They also launched the National Art Pass giving special access to art all over the UK.

Demonstrating that philanthropy can continue even when times are tough, the Art Fund is taking steps to support the delivery of art around the UK and to help people to experience great art at first hand. They include:

• Making more money directly available for the purchase of important works of art
  
• Running more public fundraising campaigns
  
• Supporting curatorial development
  
• Supporting the collecting of international contemporary art
  
• Celebrating, advocating and supporting the museums and galleries sector through the art fund prize for museums and art galleries
  
• Campaigning for ways to make it easier for institutions to acquire art
  
• Helping people make the most of art through the introduction of the National Art Pass

All funding for the art charity is raised from donations, public appeals, trusts and foundations and through its 80,000 supporters

Image: artist Grayson Perry at a National Art Pass launch

Future Generation Art Prize

Ukrainian billionaire and art collector Victor Pinchuk has launched a new $100,000 award for artists under the age of 35. The Future Generation Art Prize will be given every two years and is open to any young artist who applies on line. A team of professionals will also be asked to nominate candidates producing exceptional work.

Under the aegis of his foundation, Pinchuk has assembled an international board that marries up patronage, money, glamour and star power - Los Angeles financier and collector Eli Broad, who also runs a foundation; Miuccia Prada the fashion designer and collector with her own art foundation in Milan; Elton John (Pinchuk rates his photography collection as one of the best in the world); and museum directors Richard Armstrong from the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation and Museum and Glenn D. Lowry from the Museum of Modern Art.

Pinchuk is endeavouring to give his prize a point of difference over others like the Turner Prize and Hugo Boss Prize. With this in mind he has enlisted several established artists - Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, Andreas Gursky and Jeff Koons, artists whose work he collects - to serve as mentors for the finalists and winner.

Applications can be submitted from 18 January to 18 April 2010 at the Future Generation Art Prize website.

Image: Victor Pinchuk

Art & Patronage: Laureate Award

In our second posting on arts patronage at work in the New Zealand art world we look at the Arts Foundation of New Zealand's Laureate Award. Each year the Arts Foundation hands out five $50,000 awards across art forms, including the visual arts.

The award is not open to application giving it a point of difference over many other art prizes in New Zealand. A panel of peers is appointed to select suitable awardees and the recipients receive an unexpected call inviting them to accept a no-strings-attached award of $50,000. They can choose to do whatever they like with it and they don't have to report back to the Foundation on how it was used.

The Arts Foundation administers a number of awards, including the New Generation Award (every two years five artists are awarded $25,000) and an annual Award for Patronage recognising exceptional contributions to the arts as patrons. The recipients of this award are given $20,000 to distribute to artists, arts projects and arts organisations and all recipients have chosen to add another $20,000 of their own taking the distributed funds up to $40,000.

The full repertoire of Arts Foundation Awards is financed through an endowment fund built up by large donations from benefactors and smaller ones from a growing base of supporters. The multiple benefactor/supporter entry points remove wealth as a necessary precondition of patronage and allow more people to experience the pleasure to be gained by supporting artists.

Disclosure: Starkwhite co-director John McCormack is a member of the College of Governors of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand

Image: European Hare by Peter Peryer, the Arts Foundation's first visual arts laureate. You can visit Peryer's blog here

Art & Patronage: Walters Prize

As the debate on the alleged conflict of interest between the New Museum and billionaire super-collector Dakis Joannou continues to polarise opinion (some see the Museum's Koons-curated exhibition as a breech of museum ethics, while others see it as the Museum doing whatever it takes to get more great contemporary art on view) it seems timely to look at the relationship between art and money, patronage and public art galleries, and public good v. private gain in New Zealand. Over the next week or so we'll look at a few examples of patronage in play in our art world starting with the Walters Prize.

In a comparatively short time the Walters Prize has taken its place as the country's preeminent visual art award. Founding benefactors Erika and Robin Congreve and Jenny Gibbs established the Walters Prize with the Auckland Art Gallery in 2002, positioning themselves as patrons with ideas about how to support artists, not just art gallery benefactors with deep pockets. They were joined in 2006 by art patron Dayle Mace whose contributions ensure that each of the shortlisted contenders receive a finalists prize.

Named after one of New Zealand's greatest artists (Gordon Walters) the Prize is awarded every two years to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary visual art in New Zealand. A jury of New Zealand curators and critics select four finalists who present their work in an exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery. On the basis of this presentation an international judge selects the winning artist. The previous judges have been Harald Szeeman (2002), Robert Storr (2004), Carloyn Christov-Bakargiev (2006) and Catherine David (2008). And the Prize has gone to Yvonne Todd, et al., Francis Uprichard and Peter Robinson.

In addition to the $50,000 prize the winner receives an all-expenses-paid trip to New York to exhibit their work in the exhibition space at Saatchi & Saatchi's world headquarters. (Saatchi & Saatchi are corporate supporters of the Walters Prize.) And thanks to Dayle Mace each of the finalists receives $5,000.

The Walters Prize has many great attributes: the four patrons behind it are motivated first and foremost by a desire to support artists; it delivers a biennial exhibition of four new artists projects at the Auckland Art Gallery - one that places the spotlight on the artists' work rather than on the money (the winner is announced towards the end of the exhibition); the shortlisted artists are selected by an independent jury of curators and critics; it brings high-profile, international curators to the country; and it is all done with transparency. It is in many ways a great model for budding benefactors to look at as they consider what it means to be an art patron.

Image: New Museum, New York