The Growing Power of Museum Patrons

It may seem almost too obvious to state, but public museums rely on public funding.

In the financial year 2024–25, the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport allocated £484 million in grant-in-aid to 15 government-sponsored museums and galleries, a sum amounting to almost 46 percent of the institutions’ combined income. 

In fact, total UK public spending on cultural and arts services reached £4.77 billion that year – and was further supported by a £1.5bn capital investment programme running from 2025 to 2030. 

These figures sound impressive, but public funding for the arts remains only one side of the museum’s financial model. Though essential, grant-in-aid has hardly kept up with rising costs and public investment in the arts has declined steadily over recent decades. 

How, then, are museums expected to maintain free public access? How are they supposed to care for their collections, present major exhibitions and expand their educational and community work, if not by adopting a more entrepreneurial approach to fundraising and income generation?

Throughout the past financial year, self-generated income across the sector reached £563m – a 53 percent real-terms increase in just three years. The annual reports of Tate, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum reveal London’s leading cultural institutions now rely on blockbuster exhibitions, retail, venue hire, licensing and hospitality, among other activities, to supplement public funding and diversify their income streams. 

The figures are telling: the National Gallery generated £23.5m through trading activities, the Tate museum network reported £32.6m in commercial income and the V&A recorded its strongest commercial year to date, with £9.8m in shop sales in V&A South Kensington, helped by £1.1m in Taylor Swift merchandise sales alone. 

Tate Late. Photo: Dan Weill. Courtesy Tate

Museums have also been proactive in attracting private sponsors. In 2024–25, flagship institutions Tate, the National Gallery and the V&A generated more than £103m through fundraising, donations and legacies: £41.7m at Tate, £30.2m at the V&A and £31.4m at the National Gallery, with philanthropic income even slightly exceeding the National Gallery’s £30.8m government grant. 

Such income has helped to “stage major exhibitions, grow and strengthen the collection, deliver learning and community programmes,” says Giulia Sartori Conte, Head of Collection Committees & Patrons at the Tate, in an interview with The Art Journal. “It also allows us to undertake the conservation work that ensures a collection is cared for and preserved for future generations”. 

Too often, however, philanthropy is reduced to headline-grabbing artwork donations or framed around the generosity of billionaire benefactors. In 2025, for example, media outlets buzzed with the news of Miami-based philanthropists Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez’s donation of a monumental painting by Joan Mitchell, followed by a further 36 works by artists from Africa and the African diaspora, to Tate. 

Overshadowed by such stories, another major source of philanthropic support received far less attention: patron programmes. 

Designed to provide museums with a dependable stream of philanthropic income while fostering deeper engagement with their audiences, patron programmes have become a vital funding strategy across major institutions in the UK. 

Their success lies in the premise of reciprocity. For cultural institutions, these programmes create a pathway through which patrons may deepen their financial support, progressing from Young Patrons to Silver, Gold and Platinum tiers while nurturing the personal relationships that can later result in major gifts, artwork donations or legacies. 

Beyond generating income, patron programmes provide the sustained philanthropic support that enables museums to keep their collections publicly accessible while expanding their cultural reach. Conte says that patron support has helped Tate “remain ambitious while ensuring that our collection continues to be freely accessible to everyone”. Today, she continues, the programme represents “not only an important source of income, but a long-term investment in Tate’s future and the continued public value of the museum”.

Uniqlo Tate Late. Photo: Alex Wojcik. Courtesy Tate

The patrons enjoy some social benefits, too. The most significant one, perhaps, is the opportunity to experience the museum from the inside via curator-led exhibition tours and artist studio and private collections, allowing them not only to gain insight into the intellectual and practical work of the museum but to encounter the people, conversations and processes that shape both the museum’s work and the broader artworld. 

At higher levels of patronage, they may also obtain opportunities for international travel and exclusive access to art fairs and events. Reflecting on this, Conte emphasises that the relationship between patrons and the museum should not be transactional. Rather, its aim is to foster “a community of people who care deeply about art and the role Tate plays in public life”, while helping patrons cultivate lasting relationships with artists, curators and scholars, as well as with one another.

These schemes are only likely to grow in prominence in the years ahead. In fact, unless public funding priorities shift and national budgets change significantly, museums will become increasingly reliant on them. 

By encouraging more purposeful giving, patron programmes invite supporters to engage more deeply with the institutions they believe in. In an era in which museums are expected to do more with less, cultivating a shared sense of purpose with private sponsors may prove an important strategy for the flourishing of such institutions.