Recently, it was disclosed that the National Gallery of Victoria now pays the salaries of ten per cent of its permanent staff from donations. The Art Gallery of New South Wales’s Sydney Modern Project currently derives around a third of its budget from private donors. This dependence on private wealth in the arts is nothing new. But while the spotlight is again on arts philanthropy, perhaps it is time to consider the often overlooked but significant contribution of women art philanthropists in Australia. Here, we see arts philanthropy as social influence and the exercise of social power – forms of agency historically denied to women.

Mab Grimwade and Elisabeth Murdoch made significant contributions to the NGV’s development. Alongside their male contemporaries, they helped put the NGV on the map. Sunday Reed and her husband, John, enhanced the status and accessibility of home-grown modern art. In the 1970s, Sheila Cruthers and Janet Holmes á Court transformed Western Australia’s art catalogues through their diverse collections of women’s and Indigenous artworks. The walls of the Art Gallery of South Australia are lined with acquisitions made possible by the $38 million dual bequests of Diana Ramsay and her husband, James. Queensland’s modern art scene owes a significant debt to Win Schubert, who helped establish the state’s Gallery of Modern Art in 1984. She left the institution a bequest of $35 million in 2020.