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<\/p>\nDespite new tax regimes unsettling its rich, London\u2019s private philanthropy landscape has gained two promising additions this month. In a grand Georgian townhouse on Bedford Square, YDP (Yan Du Projects) sees the eponymous Chinese patron launch an exhibition venue and artist residency for Asian and Asian diasporic art. A 15-minute walk away, behind a neo-Baroque fa\u00e7ade in Fitzrovia, is Ibraaz: a space for art of the \u201cglobal majority\u201d, funded by the Tunisian investment banker Kamel Lazaar and run by his daughter, the curator and former Sotheby\u2019s specialist Lina Lazaar.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Global majority\u2019 is an intentionally broad term,\u201d Lina Lazaar says. \u201cThere are no limits really as to where it ends.\u201d She hopes to embed a sense of \u201chospitality and open-endedness\u201d, across Ibraaz\u2019s four floors. In a former ballroom, Ibrahim Mahama\u2019s Parliament of Ghosts installation of salvaged armchairs upholstered in African wax-print cloth is \u201can invitation for all to convene\u201d, she says. Upstairs, a library compiled by the Otolith Group is filled with texts by radical leftist and post-colonial thinkers like Karl Marx and Kwame Nkumrah, announcing a serious, progressive politics; the bookstore is presently devoted to Palestinian authors.<\/p>\n
Yan Du similarly aims to foster a sense of community and artistic inquiry: \u201cI didn\u2019t set out to establish a beautiful exhibition space, but a place for experimentation.\u201d YDP, she explains, sits alongside her existing foundation, Asymmetry, focused on funding Sinophone researchers and curators.<\/p>\n
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Lina Lazaar hopes that Ibraaz will offer \u201chospitality and open-endedness\u201d Photo \u00a9 Talie Eigeland; courtesy of Ibraaz<\/p>\n
With their focus on diversity and identity, Du and Lazaar\u2014both in their early 40s\u2014exemplify a newer generation of patrons dedicated more to social impact than private legacy building. As foreign philanthropists, London is a natural home for such ventures: Lazaar points out that she is part of the 41% of Londoners who are born outside the UK, and the 60% who identify as not white British.<\/p>\n
It is not just foreigners, but their wealth, too, that finds a home in London. Since the abolition of foreign exchange controls in 1979, overseas capital and the arts funding it brings forth have played a central role. A key example is the private foundation Delfina, started in the 1980s by the Spanish philanthropist Delfina Entrecanales, whose influential residency programme has been supported by Lazaar and Du. \u201cLondon is attracting philanthropic initiatives like YDP and Ibraaz because we have captive audiences. Our pluralism is structural, not superficial,\u201d says Delfina\u2019s director, Aaron Cezar. \u201cWhile the UK has a chequered history of colonisation and empire, the level of discourse in regard to its decolonial and diasporic conditions is more advanced here than most other places.\u201d What this diversity has led to, Cezaar continues, is an \u201carts ecology that is varied, balanced and porous\u201d.<\/p>\n
Power projects<\/strong><\/p>\n While London\u2019s patchwork network of private foundations is defined by smaller, and increasingly identity-led, projects, in Paris, a much grander vision of giving has taken form. This month, the French capital receives another vast private art museum headed by a luxury brand, courtesy of the Fondation Cartier, which has relocated to an entire Haussmann block opposite the Louvre. At 8,500 sq. m, Cartier\u2019s new space is now larger than the Fondation Louis Vuitton, funded by France\u2019s richest man, Bernard Arnault, but still eclipsed by the 10,500 sq. m Pinault Collection at the Bourse de Commerce.<\/p>\n These three art spaces\u2014along with the smaller venture by Galeries Lafayette department store, Lafayette Anticipations\u2014represent the now-dominant model of cultural philanthropy in Paris: huge private museums established by luxury goods companies, which are injecting enormous sums into the arts and promoting their brands in return.<\/p>\n Their existence can be explained by a mutually beneficial arrangement between France\u2019s powerful luxury goods companies and the state, via a remarkably organised corporate philanthropy framework. The Cartier Foundation, established in 1984, is credited with sowing the seeds of this model, while the 2003 Aillagon Law, which implemented major tax breaks for companies investing in public culture projects, catalysed the process: France\u2019s corporate donations increased from \u20ac1bn in 2004 to more than \u20ac4bn in 2023.<\/p>\n Martin Bethenod, the former managing director of the Pinault Collection, tells The Art Newspaper that laws such as Aillagon have had a \u201chuge impact\u201d on France\u2019s art sector. So has the will of its public servants: he points out that Paris\u2019s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, was central in securing the Bourse de Commerce space for Kering owner Francois Pinault, in a bid to return the billionaire\u2019s collection from Venice to Paris and assert the city\u2019s cultural dominance. Bethenod also emphasises how the huge acquisition budgets for these foundations have helped to \u201cuplift the art market, benefitting artists and gallerists from emerging to the established\u201d.<\/p>\n London vs Paris<\/strong><\/p>\n London has not seen this level of patronage as singular and self-aggrandising since Charles Saatchi, the mega-collector credited with helping catapult Britain\u2019s art scene in the 1990s. Certainly, little is being done to foster such outsized forces today; consider that the UK\u2019s largest luxury goods brand, Burberry, has recently chosen to sponsor a gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum, rather than opening its own space. As Cezar points out, the UK lacks France\u2019s \u201ctop-down\u201d approach, and there is \u201clittle in the way of corporate giving structures, despite dwindling public funding\u201d.<\/p>\n YDP in London’s Bedford Square offers \u201ca place for experimentation\u201d, says the founder Yan Du Photo by Jooney Woodward; image courtesy of YDP<\/p>\n The difference in the patronage structures is further explained by Scott Stover, a philanthropy expert based in Paris. While France has focused more on corporate donations, due to the centralised nature of its cultural patronage \u201cdating back to Louis XIV\u201d, the UK has developed a far greater network of individual giving\u2014the result of its public museums having faced spending cuts for more than three decades, which has led them to adopt US-style fundraising models. He says: \u201cUK institutions have been more friendly to private patrons than in France, which is still more distrustful of private money.\u201d<\/p>\n Generational attitudes factor, too. While Paris\u2019s museums place collections at the centre, London\u2019s spaces are more untethered from their founder\u2019s art purchases. As Du remarks, the notion of opening a space to house your collection \u201cis a rather classic form of patronage\u2014I\u2019m looking for a new model\u201d. The art industry adviser May Calil puts it more bluntly: \u201cIn London, it\u2019s simply not cool to show off your collection the way it is in Paris.\u201d<\/p>\n The benefits each model presents for the arts are keenly debated. Bethenod points out that the French private foundations are able to stage \u201cthe most exciting shows that no public institution could dream of\u201d. Who, after all, can compete with Fondation Louis Vuitton\u2019s largest-ever monographic shows of artists like David Hockney and Rothko?<\/p>\n Calil suggests that in London, patrons are focused on developing arts at a more human scale: \u201cYan is heavily invested in fostering connections with artists. Lazaar speaks of Ibraaz being a collaboration. Consider how as you enter the space you are met with two spaces to convene, a bookstore and a cafe. I\u2019m not sure if it would matter to Pinault or Arnault if their spaces were void of people.\u201d <\/p>\n Stover meanwhile points out that the much larger scale of the French projects means they will likely have greater longevity. He refers to Anita Zabludowicz, a major force among London patrons, who closed her influential London foundation in 2023 following criticism over her links to the Israeli state.<\/p>\n One measure of success for both models might be their ability to generate new patrons. YDP\u2019s model has been cited as directly inspiring another foundation soon bound for the UK: Up\u00e9, the forthcoming foundation focused on Baltic art headed by tech entrepreneur Justas Janauskas. Meanwhile,\u00a0The Art Newspaper\u00a0has learned of another foundation coming to London soon: that of the British billionaire Simon Nixon, which will focus on exhibitions.<\/p>\n Stover emphasises that while the models differ, the UK and French foundations are both responses to the same reality: diminishing public funding. And whether led by commitments to virtue or corporate enrichment, the arts on either side of the Channel are increasingly in the hands of a few private actors\u2014a matter not of preference, but fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite new tax regimes unsettling its rich, London\u2019s private philanthropy landscape has gained two promising additions this month.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[9929,748,393,163891,4884,257,1411,17425,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-499886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-art-market","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-frieze-london-2025","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-paris","15":"tag-philanthropy","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115374848332304592","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/6d9810c0b802b376145594b34a7bc447b06ea4f5-5537x9101.jpg\"\/)
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