Galleries cannot afford to be high-minded about donations

The Sackler Trust have just withdrawn a £1 million donation to the National Portrait Gallery following public outcry over their business dealings. The billionaire Sackler family, through their manufacture of the addictive prescription painkiller, Oxycontin, have been accused of contributing to America’s opioid crisis.

Many well-meaning onlookers will welcome the decision, though despite the drug’s apparent link with opioid deaths it is, nevertheless, legal, used legitimately by millions, and approved by all major drug agencies.

This is not the first time high-minded pressure groups have jibbed at arts sponsorship by the “wrong” firms. A few years ago, Greenpeace and the Art Not Oil Coalition accused BP – which sponsors numerous educational and arts initiatives in Britain, including subsidising tickets for young patrons of the Royal Shakespeare Company – of using such philanthropic programmes for “brand-washing”.

Such virtue-signalling will have a host of harmful, unintended consequences.

At a time of reduced state funding, this move will shrink the collective kitty. Arts bodies and donors will doubtless face more pressure over their associations with controversial industries such as oil, tobacco and, presumably, pharma. In practice, it is a struggle to find substantial funding untainted by some human misery or other. Galleries will lose much-needed contributions, as will other deserving beneficiaries of the Sackler Trust.

All this will hurt disproportionately the young and poor – leaving them with fewer affordable cultural opportunities while doing nothing to address problems like the opioid crisis.

Elevating the status of donors and imposing the role of moral arbiter on museums also risks politicising the process of donating. Many organisations or individuals, particularly those who prefer to give discreetly and remain below the radar, will decide it simply isn’t worth the adverse publicity.

Left-wingers often seem to long for a world in which the arts are divorced from capitalism, perhaps even entirely funded by the public purse. This is grossly unrealistic and ignores the fact that art has always depended on wealth and patronage.

The Tate family were millionaire sugar philanthropists. There would be no Mona Lisa without the Borgias. Brand-washing arguably began when members of the Medici family commissioned portraits of themselves in idealised mythical and religious scenes, disguising their real-life roles as bankers and merchants.

Despite boosting their devotees’ quality of life, the arts are a voluntary luxury and cannot expect large government handouts as a right. It is fatuous to allow well-intentioned grandstanding to slash already niggardly budgets.

Of course, galleries are no “mere thrill” – but add hugely to the gaiety of nations. Living in London on a pittance after graduation, my greatest solace was being able to wander around the National Gallery or Tate for free. Elsewhere in Europe this is certainly not the case. Vienna’s Belvedere or Florence’s Uffizi, for example, can cost up to €30 in high season.

There is very little clean money in the world. Galleries should take what they can and spend it on noble causes.