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How the World’s Great Artist Foundations Stay Solvent

Behind the philanthropy, the grants and the named galleries lies a surprisingly rigorous set of revenue streams.

The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation has a large mandate—in fact, it has two: to promote photography as an art form and to support medical research focused on  HIV/AIDS. Knowing that he had been diagnosed with and would soon die of AIDS, Mapplethorpe (1946-89) established his foundation the year before his death, placing all his assets (including real estate) and unsold photographs (plus negatives) into it to finance his goals.

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Millions of dollars have been granted by the foundation to both areas since then, with money used to create the Robert Mapplethorpe Laboratory for AIDS Research at Harvard Medical School in Boston, the Robert Mapplethorpe Residential Treatment Facility at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and the Robert Mapplethorpe Center for HIV Research at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York. On the photography side, the foundation awarded three multi-million-dollar grants supporting photography programs at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, the Guggenheim Museum and the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, resulting in galleries or facilities permanently named for Robert Mapplethorpe.

Millions more are being granted by the foundation, according to its president, Michael Ward Stout—$1.5 million annually “in an average year.” Thirty-seven years in, where does the Mapplethorpe Foundation get all the money it keeps doling out?

Not to worry. In an average year, the foundation earns between $2.5 and $3 million from a variety of sources. The lion’s share comes through the sale of Mapplethorpe’s photographic images. At the time of the artist’s death, there were 400-500 prints signed by Mapplethorpe, another 15,000-20,000 that were unsigned but have received an estate stamp (Stout noted that the average price for 16″ x 20″ or 20″ x 24″ signed and unsigned prints is $15,000), and a growing number of posthumously printed images that are larger (50″ x 60″) and sell for more.

There’s more. The Mapplethorpe Foundation earns a quarter of a million dollars annually from merchandising and licensing, as companies lease the right to use the artist’s images on a variety of products, and another $200,000-$250,000 per year in exhibition fees, as museums borrowing prints from the foundation pay $1,000 per image.

“When the foundation was started,” Stout told Observer, “I thought it would last 20 years, during which time we would turn the inventory into cash. Our obligation is to maximize the assets and make a lot of money.” Closing in on 40 years, the foundation shows no sign of running out of assets any time soon.

Most foundations that artists set up, referred to as artist-endowed foundations, exist to........

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