‘Go West’ for Art Donors and Clients in Florida

This article is part of our latest article Special section on museumsfocusing on new artists, new audiences, and new ways of thinking about exhibitions.

The Tampa Museum of Art on Florida’s west coast has raised $71 million in a $100 million capital campaign to expand the city’s footprint along the Riverwalk that follows the Hillsborough River.

About 65 miles south, the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Fla., has raised $49 million towards a $92 million expansion, known for its annual exhibits that combine its gardens with floral paintings and photographs by famous artists. Also in Sarasota, the venerable John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art completed its $100 million campaign three years ago, bringing in $80 million in funding and the rest in art.

Florida’s east coast – along with the Perez Museum of Art Miami, countless other museums, and Art Basil Miami – frequently makes headlines as real estate prices soar across the state, and transplants from the North and Midwest and even California flock to cities across the US. west coast of the state. Not only do they bring enthusiasm to the arts, they also bring solid gifts to support it, allowing museum administrators to plan for the future more aggressively than ever before. The Tampa museum, for example, recently announced a $25 million gift from commercial real estate developer Richard Corbett among the largest individual gifts to a Florida museum, according to the museum’s executive director, Michael Tomor.

Florida is popular with retirees, but young transplants are also enthusiastic. This explains why museums and other nonprofits have been so successful at raising money.

Teri Hansen, president of the Barancik Foundation, which was founded by Charles and Margery Barancik in 2014, said the foundation has donated $100 million to local institutions over the past seven years because it was an excuse for the Baranciks who have been coming to Sarasota for decades. The house on Longboat Key. “For many people, philanthropy becomes the center of their social lives,” said Ms. Hansen. “It creates a community and gives donors a sense of belonging.”

As Jennifer Rominiecki, who took over as CEO of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in 2015, recalls, “When I arrived, I thought everyone’s main interest was elsewhere: where they live.” But he said: “Sarasota is an older community and a time in their lives where people can give, participate and enjoy being charitable. Many people have decided to make Sarasota a priority as their gifts can have so much impact.”

Most of the money raised by corporations goes to new or growing buildings. st. Hank Hine, executive director of the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, is working with city officials on a potential $42 million expansion (including $17.5 million from Pinellas County) to add 60,000 square feet for digital, educational and interactive experiences. Ringling has added several new buildings, including Ting Tsung and the Wei Fong Chao Center for Asian Art.

It’s not that museums don’t want to buy artwork, but the costs can be exorbitant. Both Ringling and Dali have the advantage of having large collections at Dali, including 2,000 works by the artist himself. Still, Dali’s Dr. Hine wants to go shopping. Still, he remembered that the museum had raised $5 million to bid for the artist’s “Portrait de Paul Eluard” at the 2011 Sotheby’s auction. “S22 went for the million,” he said.

Ringling, which also has the Ringling Circus Museum on its campus, diligently contributes to its art collection, largely by purchasing items under $100,000. He recently purchased a sketch of a Joshua Reynolds painting he already owns. “We tend to purchase works that contribute to the understanding of our collection,” said Steven High, executive director.

One reason museums add to their physical space is to persuade donors to then give away works they already own, said Mr. ” 80 percent of the $100 million capital campaign will pay for the expansion and renovation to double the museum’s exhibition space.

It is gifts from people who are largely included in their communities that help expand art museum collections. Stanton and Nancy Kaplan, retired from Philadelphia to Sarasota, recently gave Ringling a collection of 1,000 photographs, including work by Eugene Atget and Imogen Cunningham, as well as Asian scholar rocks, also known as gongshi. Half of Kaplans’ multimillion-dollar gift is donated to arts and half to photography-related projects.

In a phone call, Mr. Kaplan recalled that for over a decade he had volunteered to use one of the trams that had taken visitors around the Ringling site. Why? “I really enjoyed it,” he recalls, “and met people from all over the world.”

Ringling, a satellite campus of Florida State University, also enjoyed other gifts. Keith Monda, former president and CEO of fashion company Coach Inc., said he fell in love with Sarasota and retired there at the age of 62. He and his ex-wife Linda, an art collector, gave Ringling $5 million. largely in the arts, but also in the financing of a contemporary art gallery that bears their name. They have also given a curator position and funded local children who would otherwise not be able to visit museums.

Some gifts come out of nowhere. At a 2019 concert at Hayes Hall in Naples, an affluent city in southwestern Florida, a woman handed her business card to an attendant, asking to contact Kathleen van Bergen, general manager of the Artis-Naples complex. This includes the concert hall and the Baker Museum. Before her death, it turns out that the woman’s Belgian father, Jean Van Parys, collected artwork by René Magritte. His daughter spent time in Naples, asking for Magritte’s works to be seen, and on a long-term loan of six pieces that had never been released to the public before.

Damaged in 2017, the Baker Museum also added an 18,000-square-foot site. Among the arts complex’s largest donors were Kimberly K. Querrey and her husband, Louis A. Simpson, who rose to fame by helping select stock for Warren Buffett. In 2016, they donated $15 million to Artis-Naples, the biggest gift in its history. Mr Simpson died in January.

The baker also benefited from the fact that Olga Hirshhorn, the widow of Joseph Hirshhorn, who spent many years in Florida and was the founding donor of the Washington museum and sculpture garden bearing his name, left 400 works, including works by Pablo Picasso and Josef Albers. .

Some Gulf Coast collectors have the resources to finance their own museums, including two that opened in St Petersburg in the past four years. The 137,000-square-foot Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement was founded by Rudy Ciccarello, a local philanthropist, to house his collection of early 20th-century artifacts. The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art was funded by Tom and Mary James for their collection at a cost of over $65 million.

But not all museums aim to create collections. Focusing on contemporary art, the Sarasota Museum of Art is akin to the kuntshalle, a museum with no permanent collection. As part of the Ringling College of Art + Design, it organizes exhibitions and showcases traveling collections.

“Our aim is to be a platform for contemporary artists and also a place where our students can experience the global art world,” said Virginia Shearer, executive director. The museum pays the Sarasota County School Board $1 a year for the two buildings. It is also part of the Ringling College of Art + Design, which has raised approximately $98 million over the past five years, of which $17.5 million is reserved for the museum. Despite getting off to a rough start nearly two decades ago, the Sarasota Museum of Art has raised a total of $43 million since 2008 and officially opened in 2019.

“Kuntshalle is a viable concept because this approach serves the function of bringing art to society,” said Susan Weber, founder of the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts in New York.

Wherever they are and whatever their strategy, all these institutions aim to make the museum the center of cultural and social life. It helps many to be near water. Some took advantage. Dali’s Dr. Hine sent the museum cafe’s chef, Chuck Bandel, to work at Miramar, a two-star restaurant near Dali’s home on the Spanish beach, so that he could master the art of Spanish cooking. Dr. “The appeal of this is that it extends the museum experience,” Hine said.

The annex to the Tampa Museum of Art will include a waterfront restaurant, and Selby Gardens will routinely host events in its venue overlooking Sarasota Bay. Just down the road, Ringling uses Ca’ d’Zan, the 36,000-square-foot mansion that was home to John and Mable Ringling, as an eye-catching backdrop to wow visitors and potential donors. It swells as a glamorous backdrop as Florida’s population.