In June, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) found itself in a predicament. Its south London building had been occupied by students protesting against the war in Gaza, rendering works of art, staff and visitors unsafe, the public gallery said. The only option? To close until the autumn.
Outcry ensued. Many criticised the protesters for targeting an institution whose politics are broadly aligned with the campaigners, saying their methods were misguided. Others, however, including two artists who were showing at the gallery when it closed, spoke out in support of the campaign. “Some things are rightfully more important right now,” the artist Mark Corfield-Moore posted on Instagram.
CCA, which is located on the campus of Goldsmiths University, has links to Zak and Candida Gertler. Goldsmiths for Palestine, the group behind the occupation, alleges that the couple are personal friends of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and donors to his political campaigns. The Gertlers did not respond to a request for comment.
Goldsmiths for Palestine also identified a £30,000 investment by the university in Nice Ltd, a surveillance company that had “derived a large portion of its revenue” from arms companies that provide munitions to the Israeli military. Goldsmiths says it is now reviewing its investment policy, but the situation highlights the knife edge that institutions now find themselves sitting on.
Fossil fuel firms, Big Pharma and arms manufacturers have been the main targets of protests in recent years, but the Israel-Gaza war is fast becoming a flashpoint. Candida Gertler’s involvement in the Outset Contemporary Art Fund, which she co-founded, has prompted artists, writers and other cultural workers to boycott the charity, including some of those exhibiting at the Venice Biennale this year. The Outset Fund declined to comment but pointed to a statement on its website clarifying that the charity is governed by a board of seven trustees who all have an equal vote; no one trustee donates more funding than 3% of the overall turnover each year.
Last November, the Zabludowicz Collection closed its London project space after years of boycott campaigns over its ties to Israel (though the organisation denied there was a link between the closure and the campaigns).
Hamstrung by deep public funding cuts as well as a stagnant philanthropic landscape, institutions are now trying to balance essential support with a shift in moral compass, within the art world and in society at large. “The reality is the funding situation is critical,” says Leslie Ramos, a philanthropy adviser and the author of Philanthropy in the Arts: A Game of Give and Take. “More institutions are at risk of closing. Museums fear taking money and offending anyone, and donors are terrified of giving money away, or at least giving money away publicly. We are living in a culture of fear.”
Adding to the complexities, a younger generation of artists are the ones spearheading many of these campaigns against problematic corporate sponsors, meaning arts organisations must balance their need for money with a pool of emerging creatives who are not afraid to protest.
Tainted money
So where do museums draw the line? “All money is somewhat tainted,” Ramos suggests. “People are scared of whether their money will be tainted enough to spark an attack. We’re all a certain degree of separation from something.”
Given how quickly museums have had to adapt over the past decade with the rise of social media-based movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, as well as Nan Goldin’s game-changing campaign against members of the Sackler family (for their role in the opioid crisis), Ramos has one eye on the future. “What is the next possible source of revenue that might be questionable?” she asks. “It could be single-use plastics or social media, because of the effects on mental health. TikTok sponsors the Met Gala—how will that look in 20 years?”
This spring, the asset management firm Baillie Gifford found itself on the wrong side of the line after more than a decade of arts sponsorship. In May, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Hay Festival dropped the firm as their main sponsor after more than 800 writers including Sally Rooney and Naomi Klein called on Baillie Gifford to “divest from the fossil fuel industry and all companies involved in Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide”.
Questions over the effectiveness of divestment aside, Baillie Gifford notes that only 2% of client money is invested in companies with links to fossil fuels; the market average is 11%. Focusing on “strategy” not “moral purity” was the aim of the boycott, according to the campaign group Fossil Free Books. The group also claimed that Baillie Gifford invests in US tech giants including Amazon and Meta, which have commercial dealings with the state of Israel—though, as critics have pointed out, most people could be considered complicit by these measures.
Baillie Gifford further notes it is its clients who invest in these tech giants and such dealings are “tiny in the context of their overall business”.
The scrutiny over sponsorship is now putting book festivals in peril. Costs have spiked 40% since the pandemic, and organisers have so far resisted raising ticket prices. Museums, though far less vulnerable than the subsidised literary sector, are also grappling with rising costs. Adrian Ellis, the director of AEA Consulting, warns that the Baillie Gifford situation is not an outlier. “It’s simply a vanguard of what may become more and more prevalent,” he says. “Museums are facing a moral reckoning.”
Indeed, in July, the National Galleries of Scotland faced a backlash online when it announced it would continue to keep taking sponsorship money from Baillie Gifford. Describing the situation as “a complex issue” with “many differing views”, Anne Lyden, the director-general of the NGS, said she was “confident that the funding we receive from Baillie Gifford meets our strong ethical standards”. Critics said the institution's decision was "woefully out of tune" and that it now has "blood on its hands".
At the end of last year, the British Museum faced a wave of criticism when it accepted a ten-year, £50m sponsorship deal with the fossil fuel firm BP to help fund one of the biggest redevelopments in its history. A spokesman for the museum said in response to the controversial deal that its “buildings… are in urgent need of renovation”. He added: “Significant financial support is vital for this to proceed, and we need corporate and private donations from companies like BP to ensure that the magnificent collection stays on display to the public for centuries to come.” Campaigners, however, have called the decision “astonishingly out of touch”, while one trustee resigned.
Museums have slowly been cutting ties with Big Oil after years of protests; the British Museum itself ended a 27-year-long partnership with BP just months before the new deal. The Tate’s director, Maria Balshaw, says she “feels dismay” over the British Museum’s latest decision—the Tate and BP parted ways back in 2016 after a 26-year sponsorship deal. Writing in her new book, Gathering of Strangers: Why Museums Matter, Balshaw suggests the public will not welcome “such ethical dissonance in the museums they care about”.
Nonetheless, museums are governed by binding ethics committees and, as Balshaw points out, Charity Commission guidance stipulates that institutions must accept money unless it “actively contravenes their missions”, or if it comes from illegal activity. The problem here, Balshaw says, is the “perilously subjective” nature of a museum’s mission.
So where do art institutions turn now? Whichever party gets into power after the 4 July election will inherit a dismal landscape for the arts—and very little money. Labour, which is leading in the polls, has pledged to reverse the Tories’ “chronic underfunding of culture” but has not provided concrete figures on how it will do so. The Conservative Party in turn has said it will support the creative industries with £1bn in tax reliefs as well as a complete review of Gift Aid. On average, charities, including museums, lose £200m-£300m a year in unclaimed Gift Aid.
Taxing philanthropy
A more streamlined tax scheme could also help boost individual philanthropy. Giving to the arts in Britain has hovered at around 2-3% of total donations for the past five years, according to the Charities Aid Foundation (animal welfare does the best, at around 27%). High-net-worth individuals have historically given less proportionately, and government policy has focused on getting them to give more. But Caroline McCormick, the chair of the Cultural Philanthropy Foundation, says philanthropy needs to be viewed as “something we all do”. She adds: “If you make it about a few very wealthy people then that gives power away and becomes a perversion of our cultural organisations.”
A more holistic or collective approach is being espoused across the board. In the art world, commercial galleries and auction houses are increasingly stepping into the funding breach, though this raises questions over the influence of market forces over museum programming.
Money and power also tend to remain pooled at the top. One solution would be for the major auction houses and galleries to allocate funding each year to support non-profits, rather than just giving to museums when they organise exhibitions of artists they work with.
Fatoş Üstek, a curator and the author of The Art Institution of Tomorrow: Reinventing the Model, thinks an even more radical transformation is coming. “We are on the verge of a paradigm shift, our understanding of certain core concepts needs to change, and the big one is power and status,” she says.
Other solutions may come thanks to a change in attitudes among younger people. Whereas in the past donations went to capital campaigns, or to collections and programmes, the next generation understands there is a need to cover core costs, Ramos says.
Millennials are now the biggest givers by volume, but the cultural sector has so far failed to capture that audience. Ramos believes that art education is at the root of it all. “The next three to four generations are not going to give money to the arts, but unless education policy changes, they’re also not going to understand the importance of the arts, which is the far more important—and urgent—thing,” she says.