In 2011, Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson helped pay for a giant stainless-steel slide during a retrospective by Belgian artist Carsten Holler at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. It was the most popular exhibition in the museum’s 35-year history.
Last month, Mikhelson, whose net worth of $16.2 billion ranks 45th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, was elected to the museum’s board of trustees.
International trustees now make up 20 percent of the museum’s board, including new arrivals Jose Olympio Pereira, chief executive officer of Credit Suisse Group AG’s Brazilian unit, and Hank Latner, managing director at the Shiplake Development Company in Toronto, Canada.
“Our mission is to cover contemporary art from around the globe,” Lisa Phillips, the New Museum’s director, said in an e- mail. “As art is thriving in so many centers, it is imperative to have an active group of supporters with diverse perspectives and deep connections to these communities.”
In addition to fundraising and gifts, international board members help negotiate loans and navigate bureaucracies abroad.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s international trustees include Alejandro Santo Domingo, a Colombian billionaire whose net worth of $13.8 billion ranks 66th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Asia Society
At Asia Society, 12 of the 45 trustees are non-American, hailing from countries including China, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia.
“We’ve been more proactive in recent years and are working on identifying more people,” said Elizabeth Lancaster, Asia Society’s senior executive associate. “Potentially, we can have up to 70 people on the board.”
In 2011, the organization named Hong Kong-based real estate developer Ronnie C. Chan as co-chairman of the board, which also includes Indian billionaire Jamshyd N. Godrej and Lee Hong-Koo, a former South Korean ambassador to the U.S.