The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation has a large mandate – in fact, it has two mandates: to promote photography as an art form and to support medical research focused on HIV/AIDS. Knowing that he had been diagnosed with AIDS and would soon die from it, Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) established his foundation the year before his death, putting all of his assets (including real estate) and unsold photographs (as well as negatives) to fund his goals.
The foundation has given millions of dollars to both areas since then, using the funds to establish 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 has made three multi-million dollar grants to support photography programs at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, creating galleries or facilities that will permanently bear the Robert Mapplethorpe name.
Millions more are given by the foundation, according to its president, Michael Ward Stout — $1.5 million a year “in an average year.” Thirty-seven years later, where does the Mapplethorpe Foundation get all the money it keeps handing out?
No need to worry. On average, an organization earns between $2.5 million and $3 million from a variety of sources. The lion’s share comes through the sale of Mapplethorpe’s photographs. At the time of the artist’s death, there were between 400 and 500 signed Mapplethorpe prints, another 15,000 to 20,000 that were unsigned but had an estate seal (Stout notes that the average price of signed and unsigned 16 x 20 inch or 20 x 24 prints is $15,000), and an increasing number of posthumously printed photographs that are larger (50 x 24 inches). 60″) and sell it for more.
There’s more. The Mapplethorpe Foundation earns a quarter of a million dollars a year from merchandising and licensing, where companies lease the right to use the artist’s images on a variety of products, and another $200,000 to $250,000 a year in exhibition fees, where museums that loan prints from the foundation pay $1,000 per image.
“When I started the organization, I thought it would last for 20 years, during which time we would convert the stock into cash. Our commitment is to maximize assets and make a lot of money,” Stout told the Observer. As it approaches 40 years old, the foundation shows no sign of running out of assets anytime soon.
Most foundations established by artists, referred to as artist-endowed foundations, exist to promote the legacy of those particular creators—encouraging research into the lives and works of artists, securing publications that educate the public about the artists, establishing catalogs and authentication committees to identify all known works, and making grants to institutions that display those works of art and inventory, preserve, and store the objects in their possession. Their goals focus squarely on keeping these artists relevant and in the public eye. For example, the Henry Moore Foundation was established in England in 1977 “to advance the education of the public by enhancing their appreciation of the fine arts, especially the works of Henry Moore.” Even more complex is the foundation created by Salvador Dali in 1983 in Spain, which aims to “promote, promote, disclose, give prestige, protect and defend in Spain and in any other country the artistic, cultural and intellectual works of the painter… and the universal recognition of his contribution to the fine arts, culture and contemporary thought.”
Other artist organizations look beyond their creators to help living artists who have their own needs. The foundation, established in the bequest of painter Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), works to “advance the study and appreciation of the life and work of the artist Joan Mitchell” and seeks to “aid and assist working artists,” which it has accomplished through annual fellowships of $60,000 to 15 artists and six- or 10-week residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans that include private studio space, weekday meals and $150 in salary per week. The foundation was founded two years after the death of painter Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974) and exists exclusively to provide money to artists in financial need, through individual support grants and emergency assistance grants.
Whatever the purposes of individual artists’ institutions, they all require money to accomplish their missions, and achieving this requires ingenuity. Their primary and perhaps only real assets are artworks created by artists, which can be sold to fund their goals. “The sale of artwork from our collection is our primary source of income,” said Sanford Hirsch, executive director of the New York City-based Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and chairman of the Nancy Graves Foundation, which promotes the legacy of painter and sculptor Nancy Graves (1939-1995) and provides grants to individual visual artists. This foundation also raises funds through sales of the artist’s works. “The Gottlieb Foundation’s annual budget is about $2,000,000. The Nancy Graves Foundation’s annual budget is about $700,000.”
The Joan Mitchell Foundation’s budget is much higher, at just over $10 million, according to its executive director, Christa Blatchford, who noted that the foundation’s “annual budget is covered by investment returns and strategic art sales, further building the foundation’s investment portfolio to support our mission-driven work.”
There are other ways to generate income for artist-supported organizations, as the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation explains. Christine J said: “Licensing products by artist-endowed foundations is not an uncommon activity,” says Vincent, managing director of the Aspen Institute’s Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative. She noted that licensing copyrighted images “generally serves multidimensional purposes, including increasing public access to and knowledge of the artist’s accomplishments and creative principles, even if it also represents an important source of income to support the operation of the organization’s charitable programs.”
Royalty and licensing fees can range widely, from $10,000 per year at the Woodman Family Foundation to $6,227,894, reported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in 2024. By comparison, the Daedalus (Robert Motherwell) Foundation reported royalty income in 2024 of $18,227, while the Irving Penn Foundation received $131,032 and the Easton. (Louise Bourgeois) brought in $256,639. The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation received a royalty fee of $182,188, plus an authentication fee of $7,690 and a “reproduction fee” of $51,124. The Calder Foundation received $529,250 in “exhibition income,” charging museums that loaned the artist’s works for display and another $26,938 from preservation work on works brought in by Calder’s owners for repairs.
The Keith Haring Foundation and the estates of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Roy Lichtenstein are among the leaders in licensing and marketing, with proceeds used to support the larger goals of promoting individual artists and their stated missions. The Keith Haring Foundation, founded in 1991, a year after the artist’s death, looks to advance Haring’s artistic legacy by funding exhibitions, arts organization programs and the artist’s own publications, as well as “philanthropy, such as AIDS research and youth services,” according to its executive director, Simon Castets. In 2024, those grants were worth nearly $8 million, and the foundation itself earned $13.2 million that year through licensing and sales of Haring artwork and investment income. “We do better than break even every year,” Castes said.
The profitability of some artists can last for decades. “We don’t share information about our annual revenues, but the estate has managed Roy Lichtenstein’s copyrights for several decades,” Frank Avila Goldman, executive director of arts and intellectual property for Roy Lichtenstein’s estate, told the Observer. “We license internationally throughout the year,” he noted, citing “recent projects such as Uniqlo, PUMA/BMW, Skateroom, Supplystickers, Commes des Garcon/Junya Watanabe, USPS stamps, as well as various film, streaming and TV licensing services.”
Licensing generally involves allowing a company to create products based on the artist’s work, but some artist-endowed institutions have taken it upon themselves to make copies and other items for sale to the public. Celia Bertoia, daughter of sculptor Harry Bertoia and founder and director of the Harry Bertoia Foundation, allowed an edition of 300 tabletop sculptures to be produced based on her father’s sketch. The Isamu Noguchi Foundation offers a range of Noguchi coffee tables Based on a design completed by the artist in 1944, it is available in various colors for $2,913, including home delivery but not assembly. The Louise Nevelson Foundation has created its own separate entity, NevelsonLLC, offering a small but growing number of products. “NevelsonLLC is a revenue generator,” said Mary Nevelson, the artist’s granddaughter.
Single-artist museums also need ways to generate revenue, turning in many cases to creating and selling their own editions. The Rodin Museum in Paris and the Frederic Remington Museum of Art in Ogdensburg, New York, each earn one-third of their annual revenues through the sale of original reproductions and castings of works by their respective artists. “Rodin bequeathed to the museum his works and possessions, including intellectual property rights and the right to cast original bronze copies of his works after his lifetime,” Amelie Simmer, director of the Rodin Museum, told the Observer. “We are a self-supporting museum.”
Boutiques des Musées, which licenses images from a number of European museums to individual artists, offers reproductions of painted photographs and sculptures, including the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Marc Chagall Museum in Nice, the Fernand Léger Museum in Cannes, and the Musée National Picasso in Paris. Among the Picasso-themed items are head scarves and pillowcases.
The Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation has been in operation for half a century, but keeping an institution gifted with artists in business is no sure thing. Magda Salvesen, director of the John Schuyler Foundation, which was founded in 2024, told the Observer: “There is nothing too strong in the art world. The appreciation of artists’ works is never predictable, with stellar years of being in demand and then fading away. Prices can depend entirely on the reputation of the gallery, rising by 150 percent or much more when it is picked up by a very wealthy gallery or falling when an artist’s work is given away or disposed of.”
At present, the foundation earns what it describes as a “minimal” amount of money from the sale of postcards, posters, catalogs and DVDs featuring the artist’s (1916-1992) works. A “modest” endowment helps the organization pay bills, but “the foundation will inherit when I die the shares of the co-op where most of the paintings are stored, the office space and where I still live,” as well as “some private money.” After that, “the organization will be in a better position, at which point the managers involved can have a broader idea of how long the organization can last and can determine more easily what the average income might be from plate sales.” As the saying goes, artists only become famous after they die, or in this case, after the director of their organization dies.
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