Kenneth C. Griffin, the founder and chief executive of the hedge fund Citadel who in 2022 famously decided to relocate his home and the company’s headquarters from Chicago to Miami, has made a major investment in his adoptive hometown’s biggest art museum. On Saturday, during its annual Art of the Party gala, the Pérez Art Museum Miami (Pamm) revealed it had received a $10m gift from Griffin, which will go toward supporting its mission and enhancing its collection.
Griffin was one of the gala’s two headline honourees. The other was the Colombian artist Delcy Morelos, who received the Pérez Prize, which comes with an unrestricted $50,000 in cash funded by the museum’s namesake philanthropists, Jorge and Darlene Pérez. The gala raised $1.5m in support of the museum’s education programmes. Following the ceremony and dinner, guests were treated to a DJ set by the Miami-born artist José Parlá, whose solo exhibition Homecoming opens at Pamm on 14 November.
“We’re thrilled to honour Delcy Morelos, whose powerful practice explores diverse cultural narratives,” the museum’s director, Franklin Sirmans, said. “We would also like to express our deepest gratitude to Ken Griffin: his commitment to giving back, in Miami and around the world, has left a lasting impact on the arts, our community and Pamm.”
Griffin, whose net worth is currently around $45.9bn according to Forbes, has given large sums to museums including $40m to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and $10m to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. He also has wide-ranging tastes as a collector. He reportedly spent a nine-figure sum to buy two Abstract Expressionist masterpieces by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning from fellow billionaire collector David Geffen. In 2021 he outbid a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) that had formed specifically with the purpose of acquiring a rare first edition of the US Constitution at a Sotheby’s auction, eventually winning the historic document for $43.2m (with fees). Last summer Griffin was back at Sotheby’s, dropping $44.6m (with fees) on a 27ft-long Stegosaurus skeleton—making it the most valuable dinosaur fossil ever sold at auction.
The support of generous philanthropists is especially crucial for Florida arts organisations at the moment, after Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed $32m in state arts funding for fiscal year 2025. Jorge Pérez was particularly outspoken in his criticism of that decision, stating: “This is just a horrible message to send.”
Griffin’s gift to Pamm comes as the art world’s collective attention is about to shift to Miami for the week of fairs, exhibition openings and parties surrounding Art Basel Miami Beach (6-8 December). It also comes as other art museums in the region pursue major expansions. The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach is in the early stages of planning the construction of a new wing, supported in part by $20.1m in city-issued funds. And in Miami’s Design District, the Institute of Contemporary Art bought the building that until earlier this year house the de La Cruz Collection for $25m.
