The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has launched a $60m endowment campaign aimed at securing its long-term sustainability. The campaign follows a period of increasing uncertainty around support for cultural heritage preservation, including widespread cuts to US federal funding for such efforts.
Bénédicte de Montlaur, the director of the New York-based non-profit, tells The Art Newspaper that plans to establish the endowment were in the works before the US Department of State announced the dismantling of around 45% of foreign aid grants earlier this year, including seven grants totalling more than $800,000 given to the WMF, which represented half of the organisation’s US federal funding.
“Although it is not linked, cutting US funding has reinforced the need and importance of being able to rely on a strong endowment and to be able to commit to projects,” Montlaur says. “Most [cultural heritage preservation] projects are multi-year projects and we work with partners around the world. Once we commit, we need to be able to finish it.”
The historian and philanthropist Suzanne Deal Booth, a longtime supporter of the WMF who joined its board last year, has contributed $10m toward the endowment, launching the Suzanne Deal Booth Institute for Heritage Preservation at World Monuments Fund. The initiative will focus on building leadership roles within the preservation field, fostering mentorships between emerging and established conservation professionals to promote sustainable approaches to cultural stewardship.
Booth previously co-founded the Friends of Heritage Preservation, a charitable organisation, and received a Hadrian Award in 2022 for her contributions to the field. She also supported WMF projects like the preservation of the Wat Chaiwatthanaram temple in Thailand and Native American sites in the Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah.
“The commitment to preserve cultural heritage both honours the past and inspires the future,” Booth says. “Through this institute, my hope is to empower future generations to protect what connects us and to carry forward the shared stories that define our humanity.”
Additional gifts to support the endowment include $5m from the philanthropist Virginia James, $2.5m from the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation and $1.5m from the philanthropist Denise Littlefield Sobel. The WMF has secured 75% of its goal, with the remaining 25% expected to come from a matching $20m gift from the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust.
A participant in the first professional gold leaf craftsmanship programme in Kanazawa, launched in a partnership between the World Monuments Fund and Tiffany & Co Photo courtesy the World Monuments Fund
The endowment will also progressively support the organisation and digitisation of the WMF archive, which spans more than six decades, including 700 fieldworks in 112 countries, and will boost programmes like the organisation’s ongoing support of academic partnerships and trades training like woodworking and stonemasonry. Those initiatives are expected to begin in 2026 and will be primarily overseen by Jonathan S. Bell, the senior vice president of global preservation strategy and founding director of the Booth Institute.
The endowment campaign coincides with the 60th anniversary of the WMF. The organisation hopes to continue to diversify its funding strategy over the coming years, seeking more support from private donors and foundations to supplement the unpredictability of government policy in the US and abroad.
“We have a long legacy [but] realised that our endowment was not big enough compared to the size of the organisation to allow us to make long-term plans and to have sustained support for communities,” Montlaur says. “Because of climate change, over-tourism, conflicts, urbanisation and other factors, heritage is disappearing.”
The WMF aims to underscore the need for strengthening cultural heritage organisations, which receive less funding than other fields, like organisations focused on environmental preservation, according to Montlaur.
“The field of cultural heritage is underfunded,” she says. “Everyone needs to mobilise. We need to realise that our cultural heritage, which anchors our memory and identity, is disappearing very fast. And we must be able to respond rapidly and strongly.”
