When an auction isn’t enough: the real issue is museum fundraising
The Castello di Rivoli charity auction prompts reflection on the financial sustainability of cultural institutions, which are increasingly being called upon to diversify their sources of funding
Key points
How much of an impact can a charity auction have on a museum’s financial sustainability? Not much, at least in terms of the figures. But the charity auction organised by Castello di Rivoli reveals something far more significant than its potential proceeds. It illustrates how the funding model for Italian museums is changing, forcing even the major public institutions to supplement public funding with increasingly structured and ongoing fundraising.
Open until 5 July on the CharityStars.com platform, this is a silent auction designed to ensure the utmost discretion for both the artists and the participants. It features a starting bid of approximately 90,000 euros – a useful contribution, but a marginal one given the financial needs of an institution that survives thanks to an increasingly delicate balance between public funding, sponsorship and private fundraising.
It is precisely this balance that makes the initiative interesting: not so much for its potential financial return, but because it demonstrates how even one of Italy’s leading contemporary art museums is seeking to strengthen its fundraising capabilities within a system of public funding that has been showing its limitations for years.
The problem is not so much the Castello di Rivoli as the fact that no Italian museum has yet achieved a critical mass of its own resources comparable to that of the major Anglo-Saxon institutions. If we look at the major international museums, auctions are almost always initiatives designed to foster relationships with donors, not tools intended to balance the books. In Italia, however, there is often a risk of placing financial expectations on these initiatives which, by their very nature, cannot be met.
Donated works
Nine artists, all with close ties to the Castle. Anna Boghiguian, the subject of a major retrospective in 2017, has contributed one of her unsettling figures, with a starting bid of 16,000 euros. The work by Turin-based Guglielmo Castelli is a collage on paper entitled *La mano corretta* (starting at 5,000 euros), whilst Giorgio Griffa is offering one of his famous watercolours on paper, ‘Opruh-beso’ from 2018, starting at 4,000 euros. Enrico David, who recently featured in a retrospective at the Manica Lunga gallery in the Castello, is offering two ‘Gamberi’ in low-temperature-fired English stoneware (each starting at 2,500 euros). Patrizio Di Massimo is the artist behind the painting ‘Insteps and Ladybird (Purple)’, 2026, with a starting bid of 8,000 euros, whilst the Indian artist Nalini Malani is offering ‘After T.S. Eliot’, a digital print from 2008 (in an edition of 150), starting at 650 euros. Francis Offman is offering a mixed-media work (from 4,500), Elisa Sighicelli one of her photographs, entitled ‘Rear Window’ (starting at 1,500), and Alice Visentin the acrylic painting ‘Doe’, 2026 (2,000 euros).
