Dozens of British Cultural Causes Looking for U.S. Money

Sam Wanamaker’s New Globe Theater project is only one of dozens of causes seeking U.S. money to help preserve Britain’s cultural heritage.

“They all seem to think there’s a lot more money here than there is,” complained Ann Webster Smith, chairman of the Washington-based American Friends of English Heritage. “A lot of them think Americans are just going to sit down and write checks,” she added in a telephone interview.

Among the newcomers is Oxford University, which launched a U.S. campaign for the first time a few weeks ago. And the Church of England has begun a 14-city U.S. effort to raise $3 million to help save the crumbling spire of the 600-year-old cathedral in the town of Salisbury.

These join such veteran organizations as New York’s Royal Oak Foundation, an affiliate of England’s National Trust. The charity is Britain’s largest private landowner, sworn to preserve hundreds of thousands of prime seacoast acres, gardens and about 240 historic buildings.

While there are no comprehensive figures available here, it is believed that American giving to such causes amounts to millions of dollars a year. All of it is tax deductible so long as the British recipient registers as a nonprofit organization under the appropriate section of the U.S. tax code.

The private U.S. contributions are becoming more important during what the experts here describe as a transition period from mostly public to more private funding of museums, the arts and other cultural causes.

Historically, noted Anne Collins, a former U.S. cultural attache here who is now an arts consultant, Britain has been like most European countries, with the government heavily subsidizing what is sometimes called the “heritage industry.” There was little tradition of individual giving, and there are still no U.S.-style tax incentives to encourage it.

Now, the Thatcher government has begun trimming subsidies, in effect, by holding budget increases to a figure lower than the rate of inflation. But the practice of individual and corporate giving continues to lag. As a result, some British institutions are growing desperate.

“My own particular territory, the subsidized theater, now seems to be as much under threat as the Amazonian rain forest, and there are as sound reasons for preserving the one as the other,” Richard Eyre, director of the financially strapped National Theater, complained in an Arts Advocacy Day speech recently.

Under the circumstances, it’s probably only a surprise that there aren’t more British cultural institutions seeking U.S. financial support, especially since Americans have the reputation of being unreconstructed Anglophiles.

“Americans are just crazy about England,” agreed Smith. “They’re really interested in their English heritage.”

But while one J. Paul Getty or Armand Hammer can admittedly solve the problems of a cash-strapped British cause, finding such benefactors “is not easy,” she said.