National Gallery’s Bicentenary fundraising campaign closes with £5m grant from the Julia Rausing Trust
The National Gallery is delighted to announce that it has reached its Bicentenary fundraising campaign target, thanks to a generous grant of £5m from the newly established Julia Rausing Trust. Launched in 2022 with a goal of £95m, the campaign is the largest in the Gallery’s history. The grant from the Julia Rausing Trust has enabled the campaign target to be reached two months after the Gallery celebrated its 200th birthday and the start of a year celebrating creativity, great art, and the history of the National Gallery.
The Trust, founded by Julia’s husband Hans Rausing following her death in April 2024, will grant funds to organisations, and causes which were important and meaningful to Julia Rausing, reflecting her significant philanthropy over a number of years.
Many of the Gallery’s Bicentenary programmes are currently underway, with Art Road Trip’s travelling art studio bringing an experience of the Gallery to communities with particularly high barriers to arts and culture; and National Treasures, where 12 of the Gallery’s most famous paintings are spending the summer on loan to museums and galleries in cities around the UK. Work is also in progress on a suite of capital projects at the Gallery’s home in Trafalgar Square, improving the welcome visitors are given at the Sainsbury Wing and the facilities for learning and research at all ages and stages. The grant from the Julia Rausing Trust will be put towards aspects of the capital project, in particular a new underground link between the Wilkins and Sainsbury buildings, in the space that was the historic royal mews, as well as an artist in residence studio and a seminar room in the new Research Centre.
Prior to the Trust’s grant, £90m had already been raised for the campaign from major donors including the Garfield Weston Foundation, The Linbury Trust, The Headley Trust, The John Booth Charitable Foundation, Stuart and Bianca Roden, Mark Pigott KBE KStJ, the Foyle Foundation, Kenneth C. Griffin, Christoph and Katrin Henkel, The Capricorn Foundation, Sir Hugh and Lady Stevenson, CC Land Ltd, The Deborah Leob Brice Foundation, The Clore Duffield Foundation, the National Gallery Trust, the American Friends of the National Gallery, and other trusts, foundations and individual donors.
Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, said, ‘Julia had a lot of time for the National Gallery. She thought it was an important and beautiful museum and that to fulfil its purpose it should be well run, it should look elegant and smart, and it should be welcoming to everyone. She wanted to help, to make a difference. It was thanks to her very direct interest that we undertook two major renovation projects: the refurbishment of Room 32, that we are now proud to call The Julia and Hans Rausing Room, and the cleaning of the National Gallery façade on Trafalgar Square.
The first of these, the complete redecoration of the largest gallery in the building in 2020 and its return to its original Victorian splendour, set a new standard for room refurbishment at the Gallery. It is the setting for masterpieces by Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi and Guido Reni, and it looks simply stunning.
The second project was proposed by Julia to help us mark the National Gallery's Bicentenary in 2024. This three-year project, completed just before she passed away, has given us a gleaming Portland stone façade for all of us to be proud of (it was last cleaned 40 years ago) and for passers-by on Trafalgar Square to admire.
This latest grant to honour Julia's memory enables us to look to the future, to a Gallery that serves its visiting public better and supports artistic creativity and research on the paintings in the collection.
She wanted us to be our best and helped us to do that. We owe her a great deal.’
Anh Nguyen, Director of Development at the National Gallery, said, The National Gallery is incredibly grateful for the generous support of the Julia Rausing Trust and the Rausing family over the years, as well as all those who have donated in any part to our most ambitious fundraising campaign yet. We have been humbled by the support of thousands of donors who have been inspired by our vision for our third century. Their support allows the Gallery to keep bringing our outstanding collection that belongs to the whole of the UK to as many people as possible.’
Notes to editors
The Julia and Hans Rausing Trust and the National Gallery
Julia and Hans Rausing have been involved with the work of the National Gallery since 2014, when they first supported Strange Beauty – Masters of the German Renaissance (19 February – 11 May 2014).
In 2017 they generously agreed to make a gift of £4m for the refurbishment project of Room 32, which opened in 2020, called ‘The Julia and Hans Rausing Room’. In 2018, they gave substantial support to Mantegna and Bellini (1 October 2018 – 27 January 2019).
The National Gallery is immensely grateful to Mr Rausing and to the late Mrs Rausing for their exceptionally generous support of £2.65m to cover all the costs associated with the cleaning and conservation work of the Gallery’s façades in preparation for the National Gallery’s 2024 Bicentenary, and for their continuous support.
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