NEW YORK — Unlike many other art institutions, the American Folk Art Museum has avoided layoffs and further budget cuts in the two years since the pandemic through a mix of fundraisers and increased donor contributions.
On Tuesday, the museum plans to announce its largest and most unusual recent gift: a $5 million donation from Arkansas-based arts sponsors Becky and Bob Alexander to help maintain the museum’s exhibit program and its operation as one of the few to help fund free New York City museums.
In honor of the Alexanders’ endowment, they will receive naming rights to the museum’s CEO job title, who will become the Becky and Bob Alexander Director & CEO of the American Folk Art Museum.
Longtime philanthropists and investors, the Alexanders have supported the museum for years, including donations for the 2015 “Folk Art and Modernism” exhibition and “American Made” in 2016. They are active art collectors and patrons of the arts, especially in Arkansas, where Becky Alexander served on the board of the Peel Museum and Bob Alexander on the board of the Walton Arts Center and Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock.
“It’s encouraging to see people giving back in such a way as individuals who have realized how they’ve benefited from an institution like ours,” said Jason T. Busch, the museum’s director and CEO. “I want us to be a source of engagement without barriers. Nothing costs everyone at the American Folk Art Museum. And that even has an impact on people who can pay.”
After COVID-19 broke out in New York and elsewhere in the spring of 2020, the Alexanders were the first donors to approach Busch to provide financial support for the museum, which had to close for five months during the pandemic. While admission to the Folk Art Museum is free, it receives donations from visitors and proceeds from sales in the gift shop.
Donations to arts and culture groups dwindled by 7.5% in the 2020 pandemic year as some givers shifted their contributions toward what they viewed as more pressing issues, a report from the Giving USA Foundation concluded. In 2021, contributions to those groups increased by 27.5%.
Busch said he and the museum’s board of directors, early in the pandemic, decided there would be no staff cuts to make ends meet.
“I had no doubts that I would return everything I took to keep my staff intact,” he said. “With an annual operating budget of $3.7 million, we can increase our weight significantly. Every soul counts.”
The museum, he said, received funding from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, as well as increased donations from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other groups, including The New York Community Trust and The Art Bridges Foundation.
But the museum also informed its customers and members of their plans to diversify the public and bring in more people for its exhibits — discussions that garnered a $350,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to showcase exhibits in the museum’s Daniel Cowin Gallery through 2024. The resulting conversations focused on how donors could help the museum maintain the momentum from its 60th anniversary last year and its 30th anniversary at the Lincoln Square location in 2019.
The Alexanders decided they wanted to provide long-term support.
“What started as an interest in advertising art and commercial signs has grown into a lifelong passion for folk art,” the Alexanders said in a statement. “We can’t think of a better place to showcase, study and celebrate the importance, brilliance, and full scope of folk art than the American Folk Art Museum.”
The Alexanders declined to comment on this article. Busch said the couple, who tend to avoid the limelight, wasn’t particularly interested in receiving much recognition for their $5 million gift, one of the largest in the museum’s history. Still, he said, they thought it was a good idea to have the naming rights to his title.
“It’s unexpected,” Busch said. “They said, ‘This is important to us because if the museum can use our name, coupled with your position, for more long-term financial benefits and resources, then we want to do that.” †
Universities, of course, have long used the names of donors in specific faculties or department heads to confer prestige and show commitment to the work being done. The practice is not as widely used in other industries, which generally prefer to name buildings or wings after donors rather than positions.
Busch thinks that could change. He says he hopes the Alexanders’ donation is a sign of their confidence in the museum and its work, and he welcomes the chance to have their name in his title.
“We’re talking about a couple that has been so philanthropic and lives in the middle of the country, not New York or the East Coast,” he said. “It stands for the impact that our museum has nationally. And even internationally. I want to see the museum there.”
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Associated Press reporting on philanthropy and nonprofits is supported by the AP’s partnership with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropic coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
