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The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., has received a $10 million gift from Beatriz and Graham Bolton to launch a new fund that will support the museum’s global ambitions and support its education department. The gift is the largest by an individual donor in the museum’s 105-year history.
The Beatriz and Graham Bolton Global Vision Fund, as it will be called, will be used to support exhibitions, loans, and partnerships with museums, galleries, embassies, and cultural organizations around the world. The gift will also be used to endow the role of the chief of education and responsive learning, which will be named after the Boltons. The Phillips Collection will also rename its education gallery the Peggy Bolton Community Gallery, after Graham’s mother.
The couple has previously supported the Phillips Collection by giving funds for its exhibitions of Zilia Sánchez retrospective (in 2019) and Bernardí Roig (2024), as well as the installations for its “Intersections” series by Los Carpinteros (2019) and Daniel Canogar (2021). They have also supported its Creative Aging program, which helps give older adults living with memory loss a direct experience with art. Beatriz Bolton joined the museum’s board of trustees in 2022 and now chairs the board’s Institutional Culture and Civic Responsibility Committee.
“Beatriz and Graham want this to be an inspiration for others,” Jonathan P. Binstock, the museum’s director and chief executive, told ARTnews in a phone interview. “This is an institution they love dearly, and they want to show how one can support a mission and an institution that one loves dearly.”
In an emailed interview, Beatriz Bolton said the conversations around the gift began around a year ago and was strengthened by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation’s $15 million gift to the Phillips Collection this past June. “It made me think about how Graham and I could make a lasting contribution. I believe generosity has a way of inspiring more generosity, and I hope our gift encourages others to join in supporting the Phillips,” she told ARTnews.
The Boltons first began visiting the Phillips Collection several years ago when their son Peter was living in D.C. “We immediately fell in love with its intimacy and the personal experience it inspires,” Bolton said. “What I appreciate so much about the Phillips is its ability to bring together different ideas and perspectives in a way that welcomes everyone, no matter your walk of life or point of view.”
Bolton said her and her husband’s decision to fund the museum’s global ambitions stemmed from her own experience of being born in Havana, growing up in Miami, and studying in Madrid—an “international lifestyle,” as she put it, that she continues to embrace. “These experiences shaped my appreciation for different cultures and the importance of cross-cultural exchange. Art is a universal language, and I believe museums should reflect the wonderfully diverse world we live in,” she said.
Binstock related the international purview of the Global Vision Fund to the museum’s founder and namesake, Duncan Phillips, who when he established the Phillips Collection in 1921 sought to elevate the work of American artists to the level of European artists. “What Beatriz and Graham saw as a key opportunity for the Phillips was ensuring that we could continue to do this work, but in a much broader way,” he said.
The Global Vision Fund will also help the Phillips Collection work toward achieving one of the key points laid out in its 2025–29 strategic plan, which tasks the museum to “develop authentic relationships with audiences of all kinds.” Binstock said that raising the museum’s international profile and attracting new audiences is just one part of the work the Phillips is trying to accomplish with this new fund.
“Once folks from different cultural backgrounds show up at the Phillips Collection,” he said, “how do we welcome them? How do we make them feel a part of the experience of the institution? How do we strive to continually serve them?” Of particular importance is “supporting our guests for whom English may not be their first language,” he added.
By way of example, Binstock pointed to the Phillips Collection’s current partnership with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris on a forthcoming exhibition. Money drawn from the fund could be used to support the traveling of the exhibition to D.C., bringing international scholars to the Phillips during the show’s run, creating programming with the French Embassy around the nation’s capital, and “once a French-speaking person shows up at the Phillips Collection making sure that we are able to serve them in the very best way.”
Bolton said their decision to support the museum’s education department stems from their belief that “art is a form of education in itself. It teaches us to be curious, think differently, and see the world through someone else’s eyes.” She pointed to the museum’s Creative Aging program, which was their first entry point in supporting the Phillips Collection.
A program like Creative Aging “demonstrates how art can enrich lives at every stage of life,” Bolton said. “As parents and grandparents, and also, with loved ones who have special needs, Graham and I understand how important opportunities for connection and creative expression can be.”
At the core of the Global Vision Fund is its focus on bringing the Phillips Collection to the world and the world to the Phillips Collection. “Our support reflects our passion for bringing people together,” Bolton said. “The museum makes art personal and meaningful, and Graham and I were thrilled to find a way to advance a place we have come to love so sincerely.”