There will be champagne, of course, and dancing, fine Indian food served alongside the Parthenon marbles and cocktails mixed in front of the Renaissance treasures of the Waddesdon bequest. And everywhere – from the lights illuminating the Greek revival architecture, to the carpet on which guests arrive, to the glamorous outfits they are requested to wear – a very particular shade of pink.
When the British Museum throws open its doors on Saturday evening for its first “pink ball”, it will not only be hosting an enormous and lavish party, but also inaugurating what its director, Nicholas Cullinan, has called a “flagship national event” that he hopes will become as important to his institution’s finances as it will to the London elite’s social calendar.
Eight hundred invited guests have each paid £2,000 to party alongside some of the world’s most sensational artefacts and a roll call of bigwigs from the worlds of fashion, art and culture: Naomi Campbell and Alexa Chung, Miuccia Prada and Manolo Blahnik, Sir Steve McQueen and Sir Grayson Perry and Dame Kristin Scott Thomas.
As well as glitz, however, there will be brass. The event is co-chaired by Isha Ambani, a multi-hyphenate Indian “businesswoman, philanthropist and arts patron”, who also happens to be the daughter of Asia’s richest man. Mukesh Ambani’s energy and petrochemicals conglomerate, Reliance Industries, sponsored the museum’s current (pink-hued) exhibition on Ancient India.
Ambani and Cullinan, a celebrated networker, have mined their contacts books: also listed as “committee members” for the event are Kumar Mangalam Birla, the billionaire chair of the Indian manufacturing conglomerate Aditya Birla Group, Rajeeb Samdani, a Bangladeshi industrialist and art collector, and the “lifestyle entrepreneur” Eiesha Bharti Pasricha, the daughter of the Indian billionaire industrialist Sunil Bharti Mittal.
It is they, alongside a long list of other business people, arts patrons and investors, who organisers hope will bid heavily on auction lots including a pet portrait painted by Dame Tracey Emin, a museum trustee, or an exclusive tour of Coco Chanel’s apartment at 31 Rue Cambon in Paris. About 70% of those attending have no previous relationship with the museum, Cullinan has said; something he would surely love to change.
Where previous museum directors might have been more circumspect about the grubby business of raising dosh to keep the lights on, Cullinan has been frank that the financial needs of the museum “require you to be pretty flexible in your thinking, and pretty entrepreneurial”.
It’s an acute challenge for all institutions, given the 18% plummet in core funding for arts and cultural organisations between 2010 and 2023. The funding climate is “really, really bad”, according to Leslie Ramos, a philanthropy adviser working with arts organisations. “I don’t think that a ball or a series of galas is going to be enough to solve the issue,” she said.
That said, Cullinan is a “brilliant fundraiser” who has carefully staged his ball at the end of Frieze art fair, when London is teeming with arts investors, she added. “When you are studying history of art, you don’t necessarily know that you will also need to learn fundraising skills if you want to run a museum. It’s rare to have that dual expertise, but they are now needed more than ever.”
Thomas Marks, a strategy consultant who works with museums, agreed. “It’s certainly imperative these days that museum leaders and senior leadership teams embed a development mentality in their organisations,” he said. “Ultimately, the conversation about funding is one that is going to be front and centre in the day-to-day work of any museum at this point.”
Cullinan’s “flexibility of thought”, however, has inevitably attracted criticism. The museum already has a £50m, 10-year deal with its longstanding partner BP to help fund a redevelopment “masterplan”, and the campaign group Culture Unstained has criticised the association of the Ambani family, “whose wealth comes in large part from the fossil fuel and petrochemical projects of Reliance Industries”.
A spokesperson for the museum said: “We are not immune to the changing conversations taking place around sponsorships and in part that is why the ball is so important, because it moves us into a different environment and makes us more dynamic and viable for our future needs.”
They said funds raised by the event will be spent on international programmes, including partnerships in Ghana and Iraq and bringing the Bayeux tapestry to the museum.
This time next year, the tapestry will be in place – an obvious inspiration for the theme of next year’s ball, Cullinan said, confirming the event is here to stay. Expect more champagne, more celebs and more extremely wealthy people.
