Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which continues to stand out among the major companies supporting art, announces that applications for funding related to the 2017 Art Conservation Project are open. The interlocutors who can access it are the non-profit cultural organizations that need interventions conservation of artistic assets. The deadline for submissions is Thursday 11 May; You can apply online by following the instructions at page
Bank of America Merrill Lynch's 2017 Art Conservation Project provides funding to nonprofit museums around the world to preserve works of great historical or cultural value that are at risk of deterioration, including those designated as National Treasures. Since the program's inception in 2010, the company has funded over one hundred projects in twenty-nine countries and six continents.
Last year Bank of America Merrill Lynch awarded funds to twenty one cultural institutions for the restoration of important works of art including: two landscape paintings by Canaletto at the Wallace Collection in London; The Boy in Blue (1770) by Thomas Gainsborough at the Huntington Library in San Marino; 548 artifacts dating from the late Roman and Byzantine periods (fourth to fifth centuries) at the Istanbul Archeology Museum, Turkey; and approximately XNUMX items, including textiles and related artifacts, from the Central and South American collections of the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University.
“Bank of America Merrill Lynch's 2017 Art Conservation Project helps address the need from many parts of the world to conserve and preserve important works of art that would otherwise be overlooked or irretrievably lost,” said Rena DeSisto of Bank of America.
“Every year, we are very impressed with the quantity and quality of applications received and are eager to receive the ones that will arrive this year. We have always been strong advocates of the conservation of artistic heritage, because we believe it is a powerful means to create and grow understanding and tolerance between different cultures.”
Benefited from the EMEA Art Conservation Project:
1. British Museum, London
2. National Portrait Gallery, London
3. Courtauld Gallery, London
4. Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
5. Library of Trinity College, Dublin
6. Abbey Theatre, Ireland
7. Reina Sofia, Spain
8. Castello Sforzesco, Italy
9. Musée d'Orsay, Paris
10. Musee du Louvre, Paris
11. Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar
12. Städel Museum, Frankfurt
13. Neue National Gallery, Berlin
14. Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa
15. Kunsthaus Zurich (Museum for Modern Art), Switzerland
Programs like Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Art Preservation Project are designed to make an economic and social impact; Bank of America remains one of the largest corporations supporting arts organizations around the world.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Bank of America Merrill Lynch's arts program reflects our belief that art is an important commodity. It boosts the economy and helps individuals of different cultures communicate with each other, helping to educate and thereby enrich societies. Our global arts advocacy program is dedicated to developing social value. We support non-profit arts organizations around the world, whether in the visual or performing arts, to offer inspiring educational programs and open access to all communities, create jobs and lay the groundwork for collaboration to be the fulcrum around which to improve our future.
Image of the restoration of the bronze statue Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker by Antonio Canova supported by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Art Conservation Project.
Programme:
Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Arts Support Program reflects our belief that art matters. It boosts the economy and helps individuals of different cultures communicate with each other, helping to educate and thereby enrich societies. Our global arts advocacy program is dedicated to developing social value. We support non-profit arts organizations around the world, whether in the visual or performing arts, to inspire and generate culture, provide strong foundations for communities, create jobs, complete school programs, and bring substantial income to local businesses. Art is able to speak to the whole world with a universal language that lays the foundations for collaboration to be the fulcrum around which to improve our future.
Worldwide support
We are the world sponsors of Robert Rauschenberg at the Tate Modern in London (1 December 2016 – 2 April 2017). During 2017 the exhibition will move from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. In conjunction with this sponsorship, to highlight the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to education and the value of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) subjects, we have developed the Rauschenberg Project STEAM educational programme: the Art as a Catalyst. The project, which involves female students aged 14 to 15 from an underdeveloped area of London, will eventually produce artwork, posters and a digital magazine inspired by the use of technology in Rauschenberg's works. The entries will be used by the group to involve the school and the community involved.
We are also proud to have sponsored Alberto Giacometti – Pura Presenza at the National Portrait Gallery in London (15 October 2015 – 10 January 2016), in parallel creating a learning program for children with special educational needs, introducing them to Giacometti's works through a series of workshops, both at the Gallery and at schools, in order to increase young people's observation, research, dialogue and collaboration skills. Our support activity is the result of the collaboration with the Gallery; for the last six years we have participated in the creation of exhibitions such as those of Irvin Penn and the portraits of Lucien Freud.
We are committed to supporting globally acclaimed visual art exhibitions, such as Leonardo 1452 – 1519 at Palazzo Reale, Milan (16 April – 19 July 2015) and our Global Patronage for Henri Matisse: The Figure, both at the Tate Modern in London (April – September 2014) and at the MoMa in New York (October 2014 – February 2015). To support this patronage we have worked with Bow Arts and the Tate, giving life to the project Connecting Bow to the Rest of the World: students of the Bow School have collaborated with members of the local community to create works inspired by Matisse, subsequently placed in the inside an urban underpass in order to improve the students' commute to and from school.
In London, we are promoters of the theater, thanks both to the relationship that has bound us to the Old Vic for the past six years, and to the various collaborations with the National Theatre. In 2014 we launched our support activity for the National Theater as Major Supporters of the National Theater's Future, to make possible the redevelopment of a green area and help the theater achieve its objective, i.e. reduce by
25% CO2 emission, thanks to environmental improvements. In early 2017 we announced our role as the National Theater's Learning Partner, a partnership that will result in inspiring initiatives for schools, young people and families. The project includes the nationwide creation of a written paper for 15 to 19 year olds; annual tours of National Theater productions in many primary schools; an annual theater festival involving ten thousand children aged 13 to 19; a live streaming service for more than two thousand schools that brings National Theater performances free to classrooms across the country.
In March 2015 we helped launch the Arts Impact Fund, a new £XNUMXm initiative which will allow unsecured loans to be made to UK arts bodies with potential for social impact. In the UK, the initiative is the first of its kind to target the social, artistic and economic return generated by organizations operating in the cultural field. The Arts Impact Fund brings together private, public and philanthropic investments, offering an alternative to commercial lending and grants. Among the donors who contribute to the fund, sharing the commitment to support the arts, we find Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Nesta foundation, with the contribution also of the Arts Council England, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Cabinet Office. To date, more than three million pounds have already been disbursed to ten entities capable of demonstrating a social, artistic and economic return; the ten bodies were also offered our support in acquiring greater independence and solidity. In addition to these ten, another hundred organizations have applied for various initiatives: many have chosen to undertake commercial enterprises in the cinema, catering and IP, to obtain financial aid for starting up their businesses.
Art Conservation Project
Our Art Conservation Project makes donations to nonprofit museums around the world to preserve works of great historical or cultural value that are at risk of deterioration, including those designated as National Treasures. Since 2010 we have donated to museums in 29 countries, for more than 100 conservation projects. Among the works of art that have benefited from the restoration works in the city of London we should mention two landscape paintings by Canaletto, belonging to the Wallace Collection; a 5,75-metre-tall marble sculpture, the Amitabha Buddha (AD 585), in the British Museum; three Tudor paintings, in the National Portrait Gallery. We have also contributed to the preservation of four early medieval manuscripts at Trinity College Library in Dublin; a collection of artifacts from the late Roman and Byzantine periods, at the Istanbul Archeology Museum; Gustave Courbet's realistic masterpiece The Painter's Studio, at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris; a stucco panel at the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar.
The Bank of America Merrill Lynch Art Collection has been transformed into a unique resource that non-profit museums and galleries can borrow for free, by borrowing all or part of exhibits, to generate livelihood revenues . Since the program's inception in 2008, more than 14 museums worldwide have used the art exhibit loan service. Recent exhibitions include shots borrowed from our collection as part of the Who's Afraid of Female Photographers exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay and Musée l'Orangerie in Paris (October 24 – January 2016, XNUMX). We contributed a loan of forty-nine photos of Manuel Carillo and his influencers to the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid. In Italy, in the past, our contribution went to the exhibition Dust of Stars by Andy Warhol: Prints from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Collection at the Museo del Novecento in Milan and to the exhibition Wonder for the Eyes: Female Photography from the Bank of America Collection at the Cer Museum in Ankara.
