Tag: Kara Walker

A Collector’s Guide to Non-Cash Museum Donations

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Crypto philanthropy is emerging as a meaningful funding stream, particularly among younger and wealthier donor demographics. Photo by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images

In the past year, the Toledo Museum of Art received several dozen works on paper by the Pop artist Marisol, a series of black-and-white photographs by Brett Weston, two sculptures by Roxy Paine, a painting by Richard Diebenkorn, four sculptural works by Martin Puryear and a linoleum-cut print by Kara Walker, among other artworks. Most donations to the museum, of course, came in the form of cash—such as the gift from one local family that funded free parking for visitors for 10 years—but not all. Other gifts included shares in startup businesses (a pharmaceutical and a tech company among them), an estate and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Solana, and others.

“There is a lot of flexibility in the kinds of donations we will accept,” Adam Levine, the museum’s director, told Observer. The museum’s board determines the types of gifts the institution will accept, and it becomes the development department’s job to figure out what to do with donations that aren’t artworks or cash. “We don’t have people on staff with expertise in real estate and crypto and startup companies,” he said, adding that the museum can “accept a variety of things, generally liquidating them immediately.”

The estate, for instance, was turned over to realtors who sold the house and property for $800,000, while the crypto was deposited in an account at The Giving Block, a Pennsylvania-based platform that helps nonprofits convert cryptocurrency donations into usable cash. The Toledo Museum of Art began accepting crypto in 2023, with donations amounting to more than $100,000 in 2025, “and that amount has been growing every year,” Levine said.

A growing percentage of gifts to museums arrive in the form of “real estate, pension plans, life insurance payouts, boats, cars, crypto—you name it,” said Ken Cerini, managing partner of Cerini & Associates, which helps not-for-profit groups value and make use of non-cash donations. “I tell people who want to donate crypto to a nonprofit to reach out to the organization to see if they will take it. Most organizations will find a way to make it happen, particularly if it will be a sizeable donation.”

Among high-profile museums that accept non-cash donations are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which accepts cryptocurrency; the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which accepts appreciated securities; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which accepts real estate. All three, along with others such as the Guggenheim, accept donations of stock.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, according to a spokesperson, accepts stock (“several times each month”) and real estate (“that’s a bit more rare”), as well as wine donations from winemakers for its annual wine auction. “But at this time we don’t accept Bitcoin,” the spokesperson added. As one might expect, the online-only Museum of Crypto Art does.

Receiving a crypto or other non-cash donation requires more than simply deciding to accept it. The Giving Block, a crypto fundraising platform, works with close to 30 museums and cultural institutions across the U.S., including the Smithsonian Institution and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Over $1.2 million in crypto was donated to museums and cultural institutions in 2025—a nearly 50 percent increase from 2024. “When a crypto donation is received, we instantly convert the crypto to U.S. dollars to capture the full donation value and then send the U.S. dollars directly to the organization’s bank account,” a spokesperson told Observer. Unsurprisingly, crypto donors tend to “skew younger than traditional major donors”—millennials and younger Gen X—“but they also tend to be meaningfully wealthier than the average online donor.”

Making non-cash gifts offers tax benefits to donors, Cerini said, noting that “with the uptick in the stock market and cryptocurrencies realizing significant gains, there is real value in the donation of these assets, as donors get the benefit of a charitable contribution for the fair market value of the asset” without having to sell it and incur capital gains tax.

Chris Haydon, founder of Crypto Appraisal Pro, which provides IRS-compliant appraisals for cryptocurrency donations, stated that more than 70 percent of the top charities in the U.S., as ranked by Forbes, accept cryptocurrency donations. “That’s up from just 12 percent in 2020.” Donations of crypto have more than tripled in the past year, driven by the fact that cryptocurrencies have “created enormous wealth. Bitcoin alone has gone from under $1,000 in 2017 to over $90,000 today. Early holders are sitting on massive unrealized gains.” He added that “five years ago, accepting crypto was a novelty. Today, for major charities, universities and hospitals, it’s becoming standard practice.”

As with any other non-cash charitable donation—such as artwork or an antique—donors may receive a tax deduction (usually 30 percent of the item’s fair market value) if the asset has been held for more than one year, with the value assessed at the time of the gift. According to IRS rules, if the charitable contribution deduction claimed exceeds $5,000, a qualified appraisal is required.

Finding an appraiser with crypto expertise who is qualified to submit an IRS-compliant valuation is not easy. None of the members of the two largest appraiser associations—the Appraisers Association of America and the American Society of Appraisers—list crypto as a specialty. While some nonprofit staff may suggest a name, most follow Adam Levine’s policy: “We don’t recommend appraisers for art or crypto or anything. That’s something for the donors to take care of… we don’t want to get embroiled with the IRS.”

Linda Selvin, executive director of the Appraisers Association of America, recommends seeking out individuals identified as “business appraisers” to conduct qualified crypto appraisals. Some companies that offer appraisal services for non-cash assets include Charitable Solutions, Havenwood Holdings, AppraiseItNow.com and Sickler, Tarpey & Associates. Platforms that enable crypto donations—such as The Giving Block, Dechomai and Fidelity—can also provide recommendations. Appraisal fees vary with the value of the gift: Randy Tarpey, a CPA and partner at Sickler, Tarpey & Associates, charges $120 for donations in the $5,000 range and $995 for donations above $500,000. Joe Kattan, owner of AppraiseItNow.com, said his fees range from $400 to $2,000.

Perhaps one of the defining features of crypto is its volatility, rising and falling in value rapidly since—unlike the U.S. dollar—it is not pegged to other currencies or backed by a central bank. Still, Haydon argued, “crypto is easier to appraise than art or collectibles. With a Picasso or a rare antique, you’re making subjective judgments about condition, provenance and comparable sales that may be years apart. With Bitcoin or Ethereum, you have transparent, real-time pricing market data across multiple exchanges, 24 hours a day. The asset’s value at any given moment is publicly verifiable.” CNBC provides daily pricing data for Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies; no one can tell you what that Picasso is worth today versus tomorrow.

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Daniel Grant

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February 7, 2026
One Fine Show: ‘Multiplicity’ at the Phillips Collection

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Lauren Halsey, Loda Land, 2020. Courtesy David Kordansky / Photo Jeff McLane / © Lauren Halsey

Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum outside of New York City—a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.

Collage is a virile form first associated with modernism that has endured a number of ‘posts,’ the first being postmodernism and post-postmodernism. It remains relevant in our current age, even though we’re pretty much post-movements in general. Collage borders on post-art, though, dragging the world into the work, sometimes to the point that you wonder about the necessity of creation at all. Experience seems to offer so many readymades. As the jingle that obsesses Leopold Bloom goes: “What is life without/ Plumtree’s Potted Meat?/ Incomplete”

So widespread is collage that a soon-to-close show at the Phillips Collection, “Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage,” showcases the technique through a specific lens but still spans three floors in two buildings. It brings together more than fifty works to explore how the African American story is constructed from a great deal of diverse material. The show features pieces by forty-nine artists including Mark Bradford, Lauren Halsey, Rashid Johnson, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas and Kara Walker.

SEE ALSO: Asia Week New York Is Back for Autumn With a Smaller Program of Exhibitions and Auctions

Halsey has to be one of the hottest names in the art world at the moment, fresh from last year’s commission on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and her columns at this year’s Venice Biennale, which borrowed from both the Hathoric discipline and Shrek. Her collages here ace the assignment, resembling at first glance the kind of magazine collages you might have made in elementary school, if you’d had a supernatural sense of color and theme. Loda Land (2020) probes the kind of visuals one encounters in South Central to weave a narrative about space, aliens and humanity, showing no more of her hand than the scissors she holds. A similar work, betta daze (loda land) (2021) introduces Hotep culture and pyramids to this conversation.

Born in 1943, Howardena Pindell might be slightly less buzzy but employs a similarly compelling interplay of colors between seemingly unrelated bits of subject matter, hers connected only slightly more by having been drawn. Shaped like brains, her pieces feel naturally occurring, though every inch of them has been made by hand. Lorna Simpson’s contributions merge the pop cultural and natural, with pin-up gals from the 1960s who are becoming star charts on a cheeky background that is probably legally distinct from Yves Klein’s blue.

Great work has been done with basketball art by Jeff Koons and Paul Pfeiffer, but in this show, Tay Butler manages to achieve what they do in Hyperinvisibility (2022) with far less technical support. In it, he cuts up a familiar image of Michael Jordan about to slam dunk and somehow turns all the little pieces so that the man has vanished. Perhaps this is why artists of all races and persuasions keep returning to collage. It is so simple and so effective no matter the era.

“Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage” is on view at the Phillips Collection through September 22.

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Dan Duray

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September 14, 2024
Observer’s Guide to the Must-Visit Museums and Art Experiences in Chicago

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This is everything art lovers should prioritize during a long weekend visit to the Windy City. Sawyer Bengtson

In Chicago, the very weather urges exploration of the city’s expansive artistic offerings. Each of my visits has been during the deepest part of its no-nonsense winters when the warmth of one of its many museums can be lifesaving in a literal sense. And I’m told that the sticky heat and humidity of peak summer is similarly indoor-inspiring—why not cool off with some of the world’s greatest artworks?

Climatic motivations aside, it is easy for art lovers of any predilections to spend countless days on end wandering the vast artistic opportunities afforded by the Windy City. To see it all during a short visit is impossible, so let’s go through a few essentials that you can and should fit into, say, a long weekend in Chicago.

No matter your tastes, the Art Institute of Chicago should be the most essential addition to your itinerary. Depending on your breadth of interest, it can easily demand three to five hours to give it its proper due. Masterpieces spanning all eras, traditions, and regions abound. Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Van Gogh’s The Bedroom. Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. A smattering of Jacob Lawrence. O’Keeffe, Rivera, Matisse, Hokusai, Warhol, Bacon, Pollack, and so on and so forth. Ancient Buddhist statues. American Gothic. You get the idea.

Art lovers take pictures of Nighthawks by Edward Hopper at the Art Institute of Chicago. NurPhoto via Getty Images

From there take the #3 bus for fifteen minutes to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which famously hosted the first American exhibition of Frida Kahlo. Here again, you’ll encounter some of the greatest works by renowned artists like Francis Bacon, Cindy Sherman, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Chuck Close, Dan Flavin, Kara Walker, Rauschenberg, Warhol and the rest. The MCA also tends to have outstanding visiting exhibitions from the most exciting names working today. Currently on view is a major survey exhibition, “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened,” which showcases 100 works produced by the artist from 1992 to today.

Chicago’s MCA houses some of the greatest works by renowned contemporary artists. © MCA Chicago

Between these two museums, you have a full day of art. The former requires more time than the latter, so I’d suggest seeing the Institute in the morning, breaking for lunch, then hitting up the MCA. For a hearty bite on the way between the two, you can’t go wrong with Crushed By Giants Brewing Company.

From here I recommend three places that you can pick and choose based on your available time, location and inclinations. They’re a bit more niche, disparately scattered across the city, and in one case may still be closed for renovations.

The National Veterans Art Museum was initially launched with the involvement of soldiers who had participated in the Vietnam War, and today it displays works from thousands of veteran artists who engaged across a range of conflicts. Three exhibitions stand out. Inspired by the Tim O’Brien novel of the same name, The Things They Carried portrays the personal narratives of artists from the Vietnam War. On a related note, Above and Beyond—one of the largest memorials to American troops killed in Vietnam—is comprised of 58,307 dog tags bearing the names of the dead and serves as a chilling reminder of the human meat grinder that is war. And then there’s Vonnegut, which displays fifty prints by the famed novelist that tend to be of a more playfully surreal nature.

The National Museum of Mexican Art is an absolute eruption of color thanks to the south-of-the-border tendency to incorporate vibrant hues. Home to nearly 20,000 pieces dating from today on back to the pre-colonial era, here you’ll find one of the most impressive collections of Mexican indigenous art outside of Mexico itself, as well as a slew of stunning pieces from leading artists of the past century. Added bonus: it’s free every day.

One of the many striking works in the National Museum of Mexican Art. Photo by Bruno PEROUSSE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

If you’re visiting after the summer of 2024, check if Intuit: the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art has reopened. Dedicated to gathering works from artists on the fringes of society, it’s a truly one-of-a-kind collection spanning outsider figures like Miles Carpenter, Minnie Evans, Mr. Imagination, Purvis Young, and Chicago’s own Wesley Willis and Henry Darger, among many others.

Speaking of Chicago’s own, spend some time simply wandering around and taking in the fantastic architecture. A perfect encapsulation of this is the Driehaus Museum, a restored late 19th-century house that is a compact masterpiece of art nouveau. The gilded ceiling in the Chicago Cultural Center is the largest Tiffany glass dome in the world. The Wrigley Building stands like a castle teleported straight out of the Renaissance. The biomimicry of Aqua Tower. The Blade Runner imperiousness of 875 N. Michigan Ave. The Dutch/Brutalist fusion of TheMART. The Robie House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The list could go on and on.

Finally, Chicago is well known for its fine comedic arts, so plan to hit up a comedy club some evening. The Second City is its most famed stage, but Zanies, the iO and Laugh Factory are all reliably funny options.

In terms of where to stay in Chicago, the city is packed with stellar accommodations, but if you’re leaning into art experiences book 21c Museum Hotel. It’s a quality hotel by all the usual metrics, but you’re there for the art, which is all over the place and frequently unusual. Also, get a hot dog. Few places in the world make such artistry of tubed meat.

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Nick Hilden

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July 13, 2024
Real Estate Developer Jordan Schnitzer Is Putting $10M Toward the Arts at Portland State University

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Jordan Schnitzer in 2023. Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Portland-based real estate developer, philanthropist and art collector Jordan Schnitzer hopes to boost the arts scene at Portland State University (PSU) with a $10 million gift. In addition to supporting the eponymous museum at the university, the funds will help PSU’s art and design school grow.

“An arts education is the best background to think creatively, to learn to be innovative, to help build our workforce and economy, and most importantly, to help solve society’s great challenges,” said Schnitzer in a statement, adding that his donation will not only help students but the entire Portland region. “In my opinion, this is a worthy philanthropic investment to help PSU continue to be an active part of a thriving downtown Portland.”

Half of Schnitzer’s funds will pay for the construction of a new building for PSU’s school of art and design, which will be renamed the Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design in recognition of the donation. The facility is scheduled to open by 2026 and will let PSU expand its key offerings, including a pioneering art and social practice program emphasizing the relationship between art, community engagement and social justice.

Another $4 million will support operations at a PSU museum launched in 2019 with another donation by Schnitzer. Known as the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, it houses 20th- and 21st-century artworks from the philanthropist’s vast collection. The remaining $1 million will reinvigorate PSU’s urban campus through outdoor art, additional signage and lighting.

Schnitzer’s gift is a direct response to a call to action from Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, who earlier this year asked for business, civic and educational leaders to invest in downtown Portland. “The success of Portland State University is integral to the vision we share for downtown,” she said in a statement.

Arts and philanthropy run in the Schnitzer family

Schnitzer’s patronage of PSU follows a long line of family philanthropy. His mother Arlene opened the Fountain Gallery in the 1960s (one of Portland’s first professional galleries) while his father Harold founded Schnitzer Properties, the real estate development company Schnitzer runs today. The duo were generous contributors toward PSU, having established the university’s visiting professorship in art, Judaic studies program and the Arlene Schnitzer visual arts prize.

Their actions largely inspired Schnitzer’s activities in the art world. His collection, which primarily consists of contemporary prints and multiples, contains works by more than 1,500 artists, including Andy Warhol, Jeffrey Gibson, David Hockney and Kara Walker. In addition to showcasing items from his collection at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and art institutions at the University of Oregon and Washington State University, Schnitzer exhibits maintains his own Portland-based gallery and loans out pieces to museums across the globe.

“My parents often said ‘to whom much is given, much is expected,’ but this applies to all of us,” said Schnitzer. “With this significant contribution, one of the largest in PSU’s history, we are joining others who also are thankful for all the opportunities we have had living and working in downtown Portland.”

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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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April 8, 2024