Culture & Philanthropy at Christie’s


Art is our cornerstone, central to everything we do here at Christie’s. We believe that access to beautiful and special objects is an important part of people’s personal and cultural life and this is the lens through which we consider our activities in the workplace, community, and environment.

For over 250-years, Christie’s has the unique honour and privilege of stewarding great works of art with our clients, from one generation to another, across cultures and era. Today we continue to work closely with artists and the world’s leading art and cultural institutions.

Charity Auctions at Christie’s

Christie’s is proud to support philanthropic initiatives through our networks, whether by facilitating the sale of artwork to benefit important causes; offering, when we can, our salerooms as a venue for fundraising events; or providing expert charity auctioneers.

PRESS RELEASE | CHRISTIE’S X CHARITYBUZZ: New Referral Program

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Upcoming events


Recent events

Honours

Asia Society honours Christie's with Philanthropic
Leadership Award

Our Chairman Marc Porter accepted the Philanthropic Leadership Award on behalf of Christie’s at the Asia Society of Southern California Annual Gala for our work on the Peggy and David Rockefeller Collection, which raised more than $835 million for charity.

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Must see exhibitions

Art talks

Studio visits

Christie’s Museum Services

Christie’s has been a leader in working with museums and non-profit institutions for over three decades. Our experienced team partners with institutions large and small, including historical societies, libraries, universities and art museums. We are also committed to working with our institutional clients to cultivate their patrons through sponsorships, in-kind support, educational events and programming.


More about Museum Services

Explore our sponsorship highlights below.



Sponsorships in the Americas

  • Met Breuer

    Sponsorship of the opening celebration and scholarship around Gerhard Richter: Painting After All
    4 March–5 July, 2020

    Christie’s supported the opening reception, catalogue and education programs for the final exhibition to be held at the Met Breuer museum, a major exploration of the work of Gerhard Richter. The exhibition considers the artist’s six-decade-long preoccupation with the dual means of representation and abstraction to explore the material, conceptual and historical implications of painting.

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    © BFA.com

  • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

    Sponsorship of global donor programming for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

    Christie’s is proud to support an ongoing partnership with SFMOMA – one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the U.S. and a thriving cultural center for the Bay Area – for more than twenty years. The two organizations are deeply aligned in their efforts to engage existing, emerging and new art collectors and the current partnership prioritizes the shared goals of engaging current and future art collectors through an integrated travel partnership that is global in scope. Christie’s support helps fund innovative education and public programs that reach over 950,000 SFMOMA visitors annually.

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    The new SFMOMA, view from Yerba Buena Gardens; photo Jon McNeal, © Snohetta

  • Whitney Museum of American Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art

    Sponsorship of Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art
    Fall 2021

    In the fall of 2021, Christie’s will support opening celebrations for a vast, unprecedented retrospective—simultaneously staged at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art—featuring a stunning array of the Jasper Johns’ most celebrated paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints as well as many lesser-known and recent works. With a body of work spanning seventy years, and a roster of iconic images that have imprinted themselves on the public’s consciousness, Johns at ninety is still creating extraordinary artworks. Each a self-contained exhibition, the two related halves mirror one another and provide rare insight into the working process of one of the greatest artists of our time.


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  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art

    Sponsorship of the opening celebration for Yoshitomo Nara at LACMA
    2020

    In 2020, Christie’s will support the opening celebrations for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s retrospective of Yoshitomo Nara, one of the most beloved Japanese artists of his generation. His widely recognizable portraits of menacing figures reflect the artist’s raw encounters with his inner self. Spanning over 30 years from 1987 to today, the exhibition views the artist’s work through the lens of his longtime passion—music. Featuring album covers Nara began collecting as an adolescent, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, an installation that recreates his drawing studio, and never-before-exhibited idea sketches that reflect the artist’s empathic eye, this exhibition shines a light on Nara’s conceptual process. One of the main highlights will be Miss Forest, a 26-foot outdoor painted bronze sculpture that will grace Wilshire Boulevard.

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Sponsorships in the UK & Europe

In the UK and Europe, Christie’s sponsors the following art institutions:

The National Gallery, London
Tate
Royal Academy of Arts
Victoria & Albert Museum
British Museum
The Courtauld Gallery


Christie’s Art Restitution Services

For over a quarter of a century, Christie’s has engaged with the legacy of Nazi era and World War II art theft and dispossession. Losses during 1933–1945 to Europe’s collections, in particular those of Jewish collectors, through persecution, confiscation, and forced sales continues to resonate strongly in today’s art world. Christie’s has the largest and most experienced Restitution team of any international auction house, underscoring our responsibility to this field.

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Corporate Social Responsibility

Art is central to Christie’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program and it constitutes the prism through which we consider our activities vis-à-vis the workplace, community, and environment.

We believe in the power of art in society and we endeavour to use our position in the art market as a positive force. To that end, Christie’s strives to manage our people and practices responsibly in order to leave a positive, enduring impact on society, and to enhance the communities in which we live and work through cultural stewardship and arts advocacy.

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Christie’s Education

Christie’s Education is unique. It is the only academic institution wholly owned by an auction house. Christie’s Education programmes have been developed to provide focused and intensive training for students looking for a career in the art world.

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