LACMA, Huntington lead in arts fundraising

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino are the Southern California arts community’s two entries on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual Philanthropy 400 listing of U.S. charities enjoying the greatest fundraising success.

Both museums were raising money for renovation or expansion campaigns during the 2005 fiscal year that generated the rankings. LACMA raised a total of $55.2 million and ranked 290th, the Huntington took in $46.3 million and ranked 335th. LACMA’s ongoing campaign actually decelerated from 2004, with private donations slipping 30%, according to the Chronicle. The Huntington boosted its take 139%. Public television station KCET was ranked 264th, with $58.4 million in donations, a 2% drop from the previous year.

The Chronicle came up with its list by analyzing organizations’ federal tax returns.

While charitable giving to the 400 top institutions rose 13%, to $62.7 billion, fueled in part by Hurricane Katrina relief, arts and cultural organizations on the list, including museums, libraries, performance groups and public broadcasting, were less favored than in 2004. Their take of $2.2 billion was off 8.3% from the previous year, the Chronicle calculates.

Other leading reapers of cultural largess include New York’s Museum of Modern Art (No. 57, with $239 million), Public Broadcasting Service (60, $232.5 million), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (63, $210 million), the Smithsonian Institution (91, $163.7 million), Boston television station WGBH (130, $118 million), New York TV station WNET (151, $102.2 million), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (162, $96.4 million), the Metropolitan Opera (165, $93.4 million), the American Museum of Natural History (182, $84.4 million), National Public Radio (206, $78 million), the New York Public Library (231, $69.4 million), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (239, $67.3 million), Arlington, Va., TV station WETA (257, $60.4 million), the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (305, $51.1 million), Lincoln Center (330, $47.1 million), the Juilliard School (336, $46.2 million), Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center (339, $45.9 million), Carnegie Hall (345, $45.4 million), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (358, $43.2 million), San Francisco TV station KQED (374, $40.7 million), Minnesota Public Radio (377, $40.4 million), and San Francisco Opera (385, $39.5 million).

Of the 23 arts and cultural institutions on the 400 list (including the Juilliard School, an arts university that the Chronicle classifies as an educational institution, and excluding PBS and NPR, which are national in scope, and the 225th-ranked William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation, which the Chronicle considers as a library), nine are in New York City, three each in L.A. and the Washington, D.C., area, and two each in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.