Displaying items by tag: fundraising campaign

The Speed Art Museum will re-open in March of next year. On Wednesday morning, museum officials made the announcement. Officials also spoke about the Speed 365 public fundraising campaign.

The Speed Art Museum has been closed since 2012, as it undergoes a $50 million multi-phase expansion and renovation, that includes a new North Building, art park and a public piazza. The expansion nearly 80,000 square feet of renovation and 75,000 square feet of new construction.

On Friday, February 6, 2015, the Blanton Museum of Art announced that it will acquire and construct Ellsworth Kelly’s only building. Kelly, an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with Color Field painting, hard-edge painting, and Minimalism, conceived the stand-alone structure in 1986 for a private collector. At the age of 91, he is finally seeing the project come to fruition.

Austin, a 73-by-60-foot stone building, will be constructed on the museum’s grounds at the University of Texas at Austin. The structure will feature luminous colored glass windows, a totemic wood sculpture, and fourteen black-and-white stone panels in marble -- all designed by the artist.  Kelly has gifted the Blanton the design concept for the work, including the building, the totem sculpture, the interior panels, and the glass windows. Once it is complete, Austin will become part of the museum’s permanent collection. The Blanton has launched a campaign to raise $15 million to realize the project and has received commitments totaling $7 million.

Acquired by the State through public subscription in 1920, the painting "The Painter's Studio" (1854-1855) by Gustave Courbet is a universal masterpiece that is part of France's cultural heritage. After surviving more than a century of turbulent history, this 22 meter canvas is now in need of restoration.

As this treasure belongs to everyone in France, the Musée d'Orsay is once again calling on the generosity of the public to help finance its restoration and to enable as many people as possible to participate in this project, beyond the traditional patrons.

As an exception, the work is being restored at the exhibition site and visitors are able to follow the progress of the experts' work on a day-to day-basis, over several months.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation — which runs a popular living history museum that brings the 18th century to life with actors and restored buildings — announced Friday that it has embarked on a $600 million fundraising campaign.

The foundation launched the private phase of the campaign in 2009 and says it has already raised more than $300 million toward its goal. The public phase begins Saturday, the foundation said.

Colonial Williamsburg is the world’s largest living history museum, with more than 400 restored or reconstructed original buildings in Virginia’s 18th century Williamsburg capitol.

The Art Fund, which led the £15.75m fundraising campaign to save the Wedgwood Museum’s collection from being sold at auction, announced on October 3, that its public appeal has raised the final £2.74m needed.

After its successful Save Wedgwood campaign, the fund plans to transfer ownership of the collection of ceramics, paintings and the archive of the company founded by Josiah Wedgwood in the 18th century to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to protect legal ownership. The V&A in turn will loan the collection back to the Wedgwood Museum in Staffordshire in the English Midlands.

A national fundraising campaign has been launched to buy four bronze angels that shine a light on the tempestuous relationship between Henry VIII and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.

The Victoria and Albert Museum needs £5m to buy the sculptures that, for centuries, were thought lost. The museum already has half the money, thanks to £2m from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and £500,000 from the Art Fund.

The angels were originally commissioned by Wolsey for his tomb. He hoped that they would have sat spectacularly on top of four 9ft (2.75 metres) tall bronze columns.

The Institute of Contemporary Art has completed a $50 million fund-raising campaign meant to boost its endowment, pay off a small amount of debt from the construction of its building, and support its operating budget over the next five years.

The campaign’s completion, announced to the museum’s trustees on Wednesday, marks an important step in the ICA’s effort to create more year-to-year stability. The museum’s endowment will increase from just under $10 million to $25 million. That’s still small for an institution that has a $13 million annual budget and has had around 200,000 people a year visit the Fan Pier building it opened in 2006.

“The old ICA really had no endowment,” said board president Chuck Brizius. “I think everybody knew this is where we were headed. Now that we’ve done this as a first step, we’re getting ourselves in a better position.”

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is ramping up endowment efforts after a wave of financial and administrative troubles left the institution’s future murky. Museum officials announced on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 that the amount of promised donations would raise MOCA’s endowment to $60 million, the highest in the institution’s 34-year history.        

Jeffrey Soros, the president of MOCA’s board, and trustee Eugenio Lopez, a prominent art collector, are helming the new fundraising campaign known as MOCA Independence. The goal of the campaign is to raise $100 million, which will allow the museum to continue operating as an independent institution devoted to contemporary art.  

MOCA’s troubles began in 2008 when overspending and dwindling investments left the museum with an endowment of a few million dollars. Eli Broad, a billionaire art collector and one of MOCA’s founding board members, gave the museum a second chance when he donated $15 million to the institution; Broad also pledged $15 million to match outsider contributions. While Broad’s generosity helped keep the museum afloat, MOCA struggled to find donors that would match his pledge.

MOCA’s troubles prompted partnership offers from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The museum declined both offers in favor of maintaining its independence.