This morning, Tate announced that the collectors and philanthropists Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez have donated a major painting by Joan Mitchell to the UK, and pledged a multimillion-dollar endowment to support Tate’s curatorial research.
The gift includes the six-metre-long triptych, Iva (1973), now on display at Tate Modern, and the curatorial endowment given through the family’s philanthropic fund, The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation. The funds will ‘help fund curatorial posts dedicated to work on African and Latin American art’, Tate said in the announcement.
Jorge M. Pérez is an American businessman and founding chairman of Miami-based real estate company The Related Group. His collection and philanthropy, together with his wife Darlene, support cultural institutions, organisations and individuals around the world. He has given and pledged over $100 million to Miami’s public art museum, renamed the Pérez Art Museum Miami in his honour in 2013.
The transatlantic endowment comes on the heels of global financial chaos triggered by a rush of ‘Liberation Day’ trade tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, and the recent gutting of US cultural institutions, pro-Trump board installs and rowbacks on DEI regulation measures.
