{"id":225776,"date":"2025-09-29T10:28:53","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T17:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.insidephilanthropy.com\/?p=225776"},"modified":"2025-10-07T11:53:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T18:53:38","slug":"agnes-gund-was-much-more-than-your-archetypal-old-world-arts-patron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insidephilanthropy.com\/home\/agnes-gund-was-much-more-than-your-archetypal-old-world-arts-patron","title":{"rendered":"Agnes Gund Was Much More than Your Archetypal “Old World” Arts Patron"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This summer, the arts world lost not one but five <\/em>influential benefactors \u2014 Wallis Annenberg,<\/a> Leonard Lauder<\/a>, Tad Taube<\/a>, Glorya Kaufman<\/a> and, on September 18, Agnes Gund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their passings come as the visual and performing arts sectors are confronting a perfect storm of revenue-related challenges. Some organizations have yet to see audience numbers return to pre-pandemic levels<\/a>, and many have had National Endowment for the Arts funding terminated. Some funders have stepped up to fill gaps<\/a> \u2014 but grantmakers were also already withdrawing funding<\/a> before President Donald Trump took office a second time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With more federal cuts all but certain, organizations would normally pull out their Rolodexes of \u201cold-world\u201d donors<\/a> for financial lifelines. But is that still a viable strategy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deaths of these five individuals \u2014 their average age was 91 \u2014 are a stark and long-anticipated reminder that organizations need to diversify their donor bases<\/a> as an older cohort of patrons cedes the stage to the next generation. They also underscore the philanthropic truism that it\u2019s always risky to paint a donor demographic with too broad a brush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agnes Gund was a prime example of how an old-world donor could also evolve with the times \u2014 in her case, by bringing the high-flying world of big-money arts philanthropy into conversation with a very different arena: criminal justice reform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, Gund used proceeds from the sale of Roy Lichtenstein\u2019s \u201cMasterpiece\u201d to launch the Art for Justice Fund<\/a>, a time-limited grantmaking initiative managed by the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, aiming to reduce mass incarceration in the U.S. The move came at a time when other funders were rolling out support for \u201cartist-activists<\/a>,\u201d and some grantmakers were hopeful philanthropy could help drive a real shift in the justice system status quo \u2014 even working across ideological divides. Art for Justice was especially striking because Gund, a child of privilege who once admitted that \u201cguilt\u201d drove her philanthropy<\/a>, addressed a charged issue that many of her old-world peers wouldn\u2019t touch with a 10-foot pole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years after the Art For Justice Fund ceased operations<\/a> \u2014 after disbursing over 450 grants totaling $127 million to more than 200 artists and advocacy and arts organizations \u2014 Gund\u2019s legacy resonates, but with a note of the bittersweet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re living in a world where concepts like activism and social justice, and efforts to safely reduce the prison population have raised the ire of an administration that appears to be seeking to rein in progressive foundations<\/a>, including the Open Society Foundations<\/a> as well as Ford, Gund\u2019s partner in Art for Justice. Administration officials have also taken it upon themselves to ensure that the Smithsonian museum\u2019s exhibitions are in \u201calignment with American ideals<\/a>,\u201d as they term it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Art for Justice Fund was a unique endeavor in 2017, but now, it\u2019s even more difficult to imagine an old-world donor partnering with Ford to reduce mass incarceration, which Gund referred to<\/a> as \u201cslavery, just under a different name.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A quick biography of Agnes Gund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gund was born in 1938 in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father, George Gund II, was a banker, business executive and real estate investor who established the George Gund Foundation<\/a> in 1952. When George passed away in 1966, he left Agnes with a \u201clarge fortune in the form of a trust,\u201d wrote<\/a> the New York Times<\/em>\u2019 William Grimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agnes, who developed a passion for art at an early age, went on to assemble a collection of works from major 20th-century and contemporary artists. Grimes noted that \u201cnearly all of her collection was promised to museums,\u201d and during her lifetime, she donated work to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, where she served as president from 1991 to 2002. A passionate advocate for arts education and a longtime supporter of social programs, Gund served on the philanthropy committee of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation<\/a> and sat on the board of the Cleveland Museum of Art, among other institutions.\u00a0She also gave through the low-profile AG Foundation<\/a>, which has focused on the arts in New York City while also backing organizations working in areas like reproductive health, global health and climate. Its assets stood at $38.6 million at the end of 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gund decided to dive into criminal justice reform after watching the 2016 documentary film \u201c13th,\u201d which explores how the U.S. history of racial inequality drives mass incarceration, and reading Bryan Stevenson\u2019s memoir \u201cJust Mercy\u201d and the work of Michelle Alexander, who penned the acclaimed \u201cThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d never known black people well,\u201d she told Galerie <\/em>magazine\u2019s Julie Belcove<\/a> in 2018. \u201cSeeing my two daughters raise black children has made me feel differently about black issues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the Art for Justice Fund was a distinctive grantmaking initiative<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Art for Justice Fund was very much attuned to the zeitgeist of its time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2011, Shelley Frost Rubin and Deborah Fisher launched A Blade of Grass<\/a> to support and deepen understanding for socially engaged artists enacting social change. Zooming out to the broader field, prior to 2017, funders were already supporting a variety of \u201cartist-activists\u201d<\/a> engaged with \u201cthe most significant and hotly debated issues of our time,\u201d as artist support nonprofit Creative Capital put it in 2016<\/a>.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, Gund\u2019s approach was distinctive from the jump. While other funders supported artists whose activism spanned a broad spectrum of issues,<\/a> Gund drilled down on the single goal of addressing mass incarceration. Moreover, in a philanthrosphere where many donors view perfectly legal policy giving as off-limits for being too political, the Art For Justice Fund zeroed in on three policy areas \u2014 bail reform, sentencing reform and creating meaningful reentry opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fund took a page from its more quantitatively oriented peers by aiming to reduce incarceration rates by 20% in 10 states and tracking tangible wins. Reflecting on grantees\u2019 accomplishments in December 2023, former project director Helena Huang wrote that<\/a> \u201cthe Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth secured the freedom of 1,000 individuals who were sentenced to life without parole as children, and Youth First Initiative succeeded in closing six youth prisons and redirected more than $50 million to community-based alternatives to incarceration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, Gund recruited other collectors to contribute to the fund, including Glenn Fuhrman and Laurie M. Tisch<\/a>, who donated $500,000 from her sale of Max Weber\u2019s \u201c1912 New York.\u201d The fund, Huang noted, went on to raise over $27 million \u201cthrough 300-plus donations from individuals, businesses and artists,\u201d which was used to extend the fund for a sixth and final year to \u201crecoup the time we lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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