The Park Avenue Armory has received a gift of $65 million from the The Thompson Family Foundation, bringing the total amount of money given by the foundation to the institution to a total of $129 million over the past years.  The Foundation, set up to honor the memory of businessman Wade Thompson, has long been a staunch supporter of the Armory.  “He passionately believed that the Armory should be rescued as one of the country’s most important landmarks,” says his widow, Angela Thompson. (more…)

Following the example of collectors seeking tax breaks for their donation of art works to museums, artists themselves are seeking more equitable tax treatment for donating works.  While collectors currently can claim fair market value for the works they donate, artists themselves can only write off the cost of materials.  “It seems to me there is a discrepancy in treatment there”, says Philippe Vergne, director of MOCA. “What’s extraordinary is that artists keep giving.”  (more…)

Marina Picasso is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as she prepares to sell off an extensive collection of her grandfather’s ceramics and paintings, a gesture she feels will help to heal a painful childhood. “Being Picasso’s granddaughter was very hard. I don’t snub the inheritance, not at all, I just want a lighter way to live and to be able to devote myself to my humanitarian work,” she says. “There is absolutely no hatred, no bitterness, no vengeance on my part.”  (more…)

The Art Institute of Chicago has received a major donation of contemporary works this week, totaling 42 works valued at over $400 million, including iconic pieces from Andy Warhol, including an Elizabeth Taylor portrait and Mona Lisa Four Times, as well as several “Film Stills” from Cindy Sherman.  “It’s a powerful statement to have a collection of this international stature staying here in Chicago,” says Robert Levy, chairman of the Art Institute’s board. “It’s unbelievably exciting for the Art Institute, for the City of Chicago, for the entire art community of Chicago. It’s all good.” (more…)

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation has given a $5 Million gift to Vermont’s Bennington College, which the artist graduated from in 1949.  “Helen‘s education at Bennington was critical to shaping her sensibility as a young artist, nurturing a spirit of risk-taking, experimentation, and inquiry that formed the basis of her creative process,” says Clifford Ross, chairman of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. “The foundation is delighted to be making this gift.”

(more…)

Williams College is receiving an impressive gift of contemporary works from the collection of anti-virus software developer Peter Norton, a trove of 68 works including pieces by Tracy Emin, Allan Ruppersberg, and Christopher Wool, among others. (more…)

MoMA has acquired the iconic Jasper Johns’s work Painted Bronze, a work that has sat in the Philadelphia Museum of Art for three decades, and which was purchased recently by collectors Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis.  Kravis, who serves as MoMA’s Board President, gifted the work shortly after purchase directly from the artist’s personal collection.  “It’s not easy to convince someone who’s kept something for himself for more than 50 years,” says dealer Matthew Marks. “It’s a big deal for him, emotionally. And one can imagine all the people over all the years who have asked, all the institutions, all the collectors who have been told no, since I was a kid.”

(more…)

A collection of more than 200 prints by Jim Dine have been gifted to the British Museum, The Guardian reports.  “It is very exciting,” said Museum Curator of Modern Prints, Stephen Coppel.  “It was a very generous offer, given that he has made over a thousand prints.  Choosing was fun. It took some time and there was a lot of backing and forthing, but it is a really great group of things.” (more…)

Donald Fisher, the founder of Gap clothing, is preparing to unveil a sizable portion of his collection publicly for the first time next month at Paris’s Grand Palais.  The collection of 20th century works will be shown next year at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which is currently undergoing major renovations to prepare for it.  “I think we will have more works by artists including Richter and Calder on view at one time than anywhere else in the world,” says curator Gary Garrels. (more…)

The Stedelijk Museum has announced a major donation of 175 works from the collection of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, featuring pieces by Lawrence Weiner, Anselm Kiefer, and Jeff Wall, among many others.  “The Stedelijk is deeply honored to receive such a generous, essential and wonderful gift, says Beatrix Ruf, director of the Museum.  “We are extremely moved about their decision to make the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam their collection’s new home. It reflects their deep engagement with the city as well as the Stedelijk’s relationship and engagement with the history of artistic exchange between the US and Amsterdam.”

(more…)

The Wall Street Journal looks at the current state of museum fundraising, with a number of museums competing for donations and gifts in what some call a crowded market.  “These big capital campaigns for the gold-plated arts and cultural institutions probably put the most pressure on the people who are on that party circuit,” says Michael Hamill Remaley, senior vice president for public policy and communications at Philanthropy New York. “But the 1% is not hurting.” (more…)

The North Carolina Museum of Art has received a major donation of modern and contemporary art from the collection of Jim and Mary Patton this week, including works by Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Motherwell, among others.  “This transformative gift significantly expands the breadth and scope of the Museum’s permanent collection and will allow our visitors to have an even more engaging and exciting experience in our modern and contemporary galleries,” says NCMA Director Lawrence J. Wheeler. (more…)

Over £45 million in art was donated to the British nation in the past year, a new report by the Arts Council England reports, among them a landmark collection of works from the collection of late artist Lucian Freud.   “There is something of special significance in the perception that one great artist has of another,” says Arts Council England chairman Sir Peter Bazalgette of the Freud collection. “It was this group of paintings and drawings, rather than his own works, that Freud chose to surround himself with in his home.” (more…)

Uta Werner, a cousin of embattled collector Cornelius Gurlitt, has stepped forward to challenge the late man’s will in a Munich court.  The move comes as Kunstmuseum Bern is preparing to announce its decision on the artworks, which were initially bequeathed to the institution when Gurlitt passed away earlier this year. (more…)

The Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, which found itself as the unlikely recipient of the late Cornelius Gurlitt’s trove of looted artworks, is preparing to announce its decision of the collection following a lengthy discussion among museum officials.  Initial reports are claiming that the museum will in fact accept the works. (more…)

Hollywood film and television producer Jerry Perenchio has announced a major gift of works to LACMA, including works by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger and René Magritte, that totals upwards of $500 million in value.  “We live in a modern city and modernism has shaped our everyday life, and to tell the story of late 19th century art and the birth of modernism is an incredible thing for LACMA,” says LACMA Director Michael Govan. (more…)

Tracey Emin‘s “My Bed,” which set an auction record for the artist early this month, has given on a 10-year loan to the Tate by collector Count Christian Duerckheim, a Cologne-based industrialist.  “I always admired the honesty of Tracey, but I bought My Bed because it is a metaphor for life, where troubles begin and logics die.” (more…)

Over £50 million worth of works by Cy Twombly have been donated to the Tate by the Cy Twombly foundation, ranking as one of the most valuable gifts the museum has ever received.  “It ranks alongside Rothko’s gift of the Seagram mural paintings in 1970 and together with Twombly’s cycle of paintings The Four Seasons 1993-5, acquired in 2002,” Tate Director Sir Nicholas Serota said of the acquisition. “His gives an enduring place in London to the work of one of the great painters of the second half of the 20th century.” (more…)

Artist Jim Dine has donated his collection of fine art prints to Washington State University’s Museum of Art, consisting of more than 200 works prints valued at nearly $2 million.  “This is a complete career overview in printmaking by one of the most significant artists of our time, all from the artist himself,” says Chris Bruce, director for the Museum of Art/WSU. “It is unprecedented for our museum and we are breathless over the scope of this gift.” (more…)

A collection of 62 artworks, among them pieces by Van Gogh and Monet, have been donated to the National Gallery of Art from the estate of museum benefactor Paul Mellon, who passed away in 1999.  Of particular note is the Van Gogh piece Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves, created shortly after the artist cut off his ear, and suffered a break in his friendship with Paul Gauguin.  “It’s this very emotionally wrought period of time,” says curator Kimberly Jones. “I think this still life, of all the still lives, is the most Gauguin-like in terms of the pallete, the symbolism.  I can’t help but wonder, looking at this, if Paul Gauguin’s presence isn’t being very much felt in this painting.” (more…)

Damien Hirst has donated the gilded skeleton of a woolly mammoth, secured inside a steel and glass case, for auction in benefit of non-profit amfAR’s 21st Cinema Against AIDS gala.  “I wanted to play with these ideas of legend, history and science by gilding the skeleton and placing it within a monolithic gold tank,” Hirst said. “It’s such an absolute expression of mortality, but I’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, I’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful.” (more…)

The Brooklyn Museum has been given a $5 Million endownment towards its director position from the Leon Levy Foundation.  The gift formally makes Director Arnold L. Lehman the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum.  “I grew up in Brooklyn,” says gift namesake Shelby White, a founding trustee of the Leon Levy Foundation, “and I remember taking class trips to the museum to look at the Egyptian collection. I didn’t realize, until much later, that it was one of the greatest museums in the world.” (more…)

As it prepares to move downtown, the Whitney has announced that it will donate its freestanding studio space uptown to Queens’s Socrates Sculpture Park.  “The Whitney Museum has generously presented us with an opportunity to explore the possibility of our first indoor space, which may be used to expand the park’s longstanding free arts education program,” says Socrates Sculpture Park director John Hatfield. “Other possible adaptable uses may include a gallery, visitor area or administrative space.” (more…)

Hong Kong’s M+ Museum has received a major gift of 37 contemporary Chinese works from the collection of Guan Yi, one of the nation’s most significant collectors.  The donation includes a number of important works, most notably the entire checklist from the 2003 Venice Biennale Exhibition Canton Express.  “Guan Yi’s generous donation is a marker of the trust and respect that M+, Hong Kong’s future museum for visual culture, already holds within the international artistic community, and signals building global anticipation for the first museum of its kind in Asia – already housing one of the most important collections of Hong Kong and Chinese contemporary art worldwide,” says Michael Lynch, West Kowloon Cultural District Authority’s Chief Executive Officer.  (more…)