The dos and don’ts of donating art to museums

One of the biggest mistakes that a collector can make when deciding to donate art is to assume that their favourite museum will want it. “Collectors often think, ‘I live in Chicago, so I want to give this to the Art Institute of Chicago,’ but 99 per cent of the time they’re going to say no,” says Michael Darling, co-founder of Museum Exchange.

Founded in 2020, Museum Exchange is the first — and only — matchmaking platform for aspiring art donors and US and Canadian museums; it aims to avoid these rejections.

Instead of offering artworks to museums directly, would-be donors list those pieces they would like to give away in one of Museum Exchange’s online catalogues. Museums and other non-profit institutions then submit proposals for art that interests them. “We help collectors find museums that would benefit from their piece and, chances are, put it on view more often than a big marquee museum,” says Darling.

In 2024, 551 artworks were donated through Museum Exchange, which charges donors a flat fee for every artwork successfully donated and also helps with cataloguing, appraisals, shipping and tax forms.

Leading art institutions are now grappling with unwieldy permanent collections, finite space and, in some cases, diminished budgets for cataloguing, storing, conserving and insuring new works. From programmes such as Museum Exchange to upfront expectations that cash will accompany paintings, collectors are having to change the way they donate art to museums and galleries.

That is complicating matters for aspiring donors, particularly given the considerable tax breaks available for collectors or their estates. Nearly 40 per cent of respondents to the 2024 Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting said they wanted to donate some of their art to a museum or other charity in the next year.

The result is a balancing act. Institutions are actively seeking donations of art that fills gaps in their collections or advances acquisition goals, such as improving diversity, while trying not to seem ungrateful for turning down the vast majority of unsolicited donations.

“The process of gifting to museums has grown in scale,” says Naomi Beckwith, deputy director and chief curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. “There’s more volume, which puts institutions in a position to really think about priorities, and that may not be such a bad thing on both sides.” The Guggenheim is collecting more strategically, with a focus on diversity and innovation, and Beckwith says that when trying to change the composition of a vast permanent collection, every donation counts.

When they lived in Seattle, Washington, collectors Cathy and Michael Casteel donated art from their collection directly to local museums. But after relocating to La Jolla, California, in 2023, they began using Museum Exchange to donate art to institutions that were new to them all over the US, including university art museums and hospitals.

The platform is an efficient way for institutions to fill gaps in their permanent collections. Gary Tinterow, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) says the museum has received more than four dozen works via Museum Exchange, including pieces by Christian Marclay and Marta Minujín. “I think it’s terrific and it does fulfil a need,” he says.

Many of the new approaches to donating art also involve money. Institutions are asking for cash endowments to support the conservation, research, insurance and storage of direct donations of work. That can surprise would-be donors. “It didn’t happen before Covid as often as it’s happening now,” says Rosemary Ringwald, head of art planning at Bank of America, where she assists collectors with their tax and estate plans. She says that since the beginning of the pandemic, museums have struggled with closures, lay-offs and budget cuts. “I’m seeing this push and pull between collectors and museums during negotiations.”

The gift of Joan Mitchell’s six-metre-long triptych “Iva” (1973) to Tate this April by Jorge M and Darlene Pérez came with an endowment to help fund curatorial posts dedicated to work on African and Latin American art. Also included was the promise of the donation of additional works by African and African diaspora artists from the Pérez Collection in the coming years. It was a demonstration of how complex and multi-layered major donations can be.

The donation, the result of a long-standing relationship between Tate and the Pérezes, fits with Tate’s policy of collecting less, but more strategically, focusing on work by under-represented artists. “‘Iva’ is a really important painting, a beautiful, jaw-dropping triptych, and a work that would be absolutely unobtainable to us otherwise,” says Gregor Muir, Tate’s director of collection. “We simply have to focus on the absolute priorities and that is works that are transformative and strategic.”

Of course, money is always welcome. The Bukhman Foundation’s donation of £1mn to the UK’s National Portrait Gallery in March for portraits by contemporary artists has enabled it to buy works by Hew Locke and Sonia Boyce.

There are also more market-based drivers of donations. Under “buy one, gift one” deals, collectors seeking work by an in-demand contemporary artist agree to buy two pieces — keeping one and donating the other to a museum.

These deals can benefit collectors, galleries, artists and institutions. “They’re extremely beneficial to museums, which often are not going to dive into speculative markets themselves where young artists’ work is being valued at close to a million dollars,” says Tinterow, adding that the MFAH has received several important paintings made in the past couple of years through these agreements.

However, they can aggravate collectors, who feel they are being forced to buy two works just to get one, and lead to conflicts between collectors and galleries about which institutions will benefit. Sometimes galleries cannot find a museum that wants the second painting. These agreements have become less prevalent as the ultra-contemporary art market has softened.

Beckwith believes that museums have become savvier about these agreements. “I think everyone is now smart enough to know when this is a targeted strategy or a genuine offer of a future relationship,” she says.

Given their financial and space constraints, major institutions are most likely to accept individual or small groups of artworks rather than entire collections unless they are exceptional, as with Leonard Lauder’s Cubist trove gifted to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

I think everyone is now smart enough to know when this is a targeted strategy or a genuine offer of a future relationship New York-based art adviser Megan Fox Kelly says she is working with the owners of a very large collection who want to donate it to a museum that already owns some of the same artists, so does not want the collection in its entirety. “We’re having conversations about whether the owners would entertain another institution, even an institution that they haven’t been involved with before, or breaking it up between different institutions,” she says.

In a shifting landscape, potential donors would do well to speak directly to museum directors or curators — or consult an art adviser — to understand an institution’s tax status, mission, acquisition policy and collecting priorities. Ideally, collectors should also give museums the flexibility to lend or de-accession (sell) artworks as their needs change.

The Guggenheim’s Beckwith says that collectors should build long-term relationships with museums that interest them. “Join the patrons’ groups, work with curators to educate yourself while supporting the mission and vision of that institution,” she says. “That will be one of the best shaping forces for your collection and help you understand how it can live in institutions in perpetuity.”