Anyone know a billionaire or two?
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This is just an idea that came up in another thread – in the era of the Celtic Tiger, how come we haven’t we seen a greater level of the Irish super-rich making large donations to the state in the form of Opera Houses, new wings to National Galleries, public parks?
As an example, there’s the waterside Opera House in Copenhagen that was donated by the Maersk shipping group. This wasn’t simply to do with charity, as everyone in Denmark knows that it was Maersk who was behind it. Everyone’s a winner, so to speak. Here, we’ve had the Tony O’Reilly buildings for UCD in Citywest, and there was a rumour that JP McManus was going to help fund the new National Stadium. But that’s about it.
So with that, I’d like to appeal to the spirit of ego and public one-upmanship that surely lies within the hearts of the fabulously wealthy, and ask them whether they’d like their name to be immortalised in a building or two.
Now as long as one of those chaps is an archiseek regular, this should set the ball rolling…. 😎
@massamann wrote:
As an example, there’s the waterside Opera House in Copenhagen that was donated by the Maersk shipping group. This wasn’t simply to do with charity, as everyone in Denmark knows that it was Maersk who was behind it. Everyone’s a winner, so to speak. Here, we’ve had the Tony O’Reilly buildings for UCD in Citywest, and there was a rumour that JP McManus was going to help fund the new National Stadium. But that’s about it.
Don’t forget Michael Wall, who funded the Taoiseach’s residence.:D
But you’re right. It is common in most capitalist countries for this to happen. The Carnegie Foundation, who fund public libraries around the world, the Sainsbury wing of the National Gallery in London, etc., all spring readily to mind.
In fairness to Sir Anthony, he has been pretty good to TCD, UCD, Belvedere College (and perhaps other places?). Michael Smurfit gave us a business school, Peter Sutherland a building/institute in TCD, and of course Chuck Feeney has been without parallel in his philanthropy.
Dermot Desmond donated around 250,000 pounds to fund an extension to Gonzaga College in Ranelagh, which does not bear his name. (Hardly a public building, of course). And Sean Dunne donated a 750,000 euro all-weather rugby pitch to Clongowes Wood College – again, hardly a public building, but philanthropy nonetheless.
(Looking at the above, the J’s actually seem to have done rather well out of these philanthropists. Quelle surprise:D)
Maybe most of the really wealthy Irish are donating money without specifying that their name should be attached to the finished product – like Desmond and Dunne in the above examples. Maybe there’s a lot of quiet philanthropy going on behind the scenes, It’s possible the wealthy Irish are a bit coy about flaunting their wealth in philanthropic gestures? No?
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