A red-granite colossus of Ramses II greets visitors at the entrance of Cairo’s new
Grand Egyptian Museum. Towering and sunlit, it is the centerpiece of an ambitious institution built to house the world’s largest collection devoted to a single civilization. With sweeping views of the Giza pyramids, along with a high-tech visitor-first design, the museum is more than a tribute to ancient Egypt – it is a statement of national intent. As Ahmed Ghoneim, the museum’s chief executive, put it, the Grand Egyptian Museum sends “a political signal that Egypt is capable not only of preserving its … antiquities, but, most importantly, giving them a state-of-the-art display [with] cutting-edge technology.” Amid frequent political volatility, Egypt has managed to construct a formidable temple to its past, an assertion that heritage can be both monumental and modern.
Not every country has the resources, will, or shared political determination to mount such a robust preservation campaign. In many cases, the guardians of cultural memory are not states, but private individuals, collectors who step in when public institutions falter. Nowhere is this clearer than in Iraq. During the Gulf War in 1991 and in the wake of the 2003 invasion, looters ransacked the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, and thousands of ancient artifacts disappeared into the black market. While governments struggled to respond, archaeologists, curators, and private collectors mobilized informally to recover looted items, fund restorations, and pressure institutions to return stolen heritage. In recent years, private actors have played a key role in repatriating items from the US and Europe—including a 3,500-year-old Sumerian tablet inscribed with part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was acquired by Hobby Lobby and later returned to Iraq thanks to legal and advocacy efforts supported in part by museum-linked collectors. These efforts, while imperfect, reveal an uncomfortable truth: when institutions collapse or are constrained by politics, it is often individuals—rather than states—who preserve the threads of history. These collectors aren’t trophy hunters; many view themselves as custodians, stewards of fragile pasts that would otherwise be lost.
Among the most influential is Patrick Drahi, the French-Israeli telecoms magnate whose acquisition of Sotheby’s in 2019 marked a turning point not just for the auction house, but for the broader ecosystem of cultural stewardship. Since going private, Sotheby’s has undergone a quiet transformation: it has expanded into new cultural capitals such as Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, launched new departments reflecting a wider definition of collectible culture, and invested heavily in infrastructure, including its planned move into New York’s Breuer Building, the former home of the Whitney Museum. As a Sotheby’s spokesperson put it, “Under Mr. Drahi’s ownership, Sotheby’s is significantly larger, more diversified and more profitable than ever before,” with hundreds of millions invested into facilities and public-facing spaces. These aren’t just business moves—they are part of a strategy to make cultural heritage more visible, accessible, and relevant. In this sense, Sotheby’s under Drahi increasingly acts less like a marketplace and more like a museum without walls.
Drahi’s impact since taking over Sotheby’s can’t be measured solely in the auction house’s sales. It lies in the infrastructure he’s building: spaces, systems, and platforms that allow cultural objects to be seen, studied, and appreciated by broader audiences. Sotheby’s, in this regard, occupies a space beyond that of a simple marketplace. It is a conduit through which heritage is activated to be admired by many, not to be locked away. The auction house is increasingly acting like a museum without walls; rotating exhibitions, scholarships, public access, and storytelling are as much part of the offer as the final gavel price. Under Drahi, Sotheby’s launched the Cultural Leaders Programme, a fully funded scholarship (three per year over three years) in partnership with Culture&, aimed at empowering diverse early-career professionals in art and museum leadership—complete with fee waivers and substantial stipends to cover the cost of London living. Throughout its global network, Sotheby’s now hosts rotating exhibitions, pop-up showcases, and virtual tours (for example during its Hong Kong spring and autumn sales), bringing unique collections to audiences year-round.
This model of stewardship isn’t unique to Drahi’s Sotheby’s. The British investor Jonathan Ruffer comes to mind, whose philanthropy in northern England has transformed the way Spanish Old Masters are experienced. Rather than keep his impressive collection behind closed doors, Ruffer founded the Spanish Gallery in Bishop Auckland–a town better known for coal mining than Caravaggisti. Alongside his ongoing restoration of Auckland Castle, Ruffer has invested over £200 million to regenerate the region through culture. The works are not stored in climate-controlled silence, but displayed, interpreted, and made part of the community’s daily life, showcasing art collecting and patronage as an act of civic duty.
In addition to the Spanish Gallery, Ruffer has supported art on a very local level with the establishment of the Mining Art Gallery, also in Bishop Auckland. Opened in 2017, the gallery is dedicated to the art of coal miners—many of whom painted their underground experiences and community life with extraordinary emotional depth. The core of the collection comes from Gillian Wales and Dr. Robert McManners, who spent more than two decades documenting and preserving the visual legacy of the Great Northern Coalfield. Their Gemini Collection includes over 400 works by artists such as Norman Cornish, Tom McGuinness, and Ted Holloway, capturing everything from life down in the pit to domestic scenes above ground.
In the Mining Art Gallery, the miners’ creativity is not fossilised in nostalgia, but reactivated as civic memory. What began as a grassroots collecting effort became, with Ruffer’s support, a powerful model for how private philanthropy can make working-class cultural history visible—and give it a permanent home where it can be appreciated by the public.
Similarly, Israeli shipping magnate Eyal Ofer has directed major philanthropic efforts toward cultural institutions across the globe, from the Tate Modern to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. While he holds one of the world’s leading collections of Impressionist and Modern Art, Ofer has made a point of giving significant works and endowments to public institutions – extending the life and meaning of the objects beyond personal ownership, embodying a model of access, not exclusivity.
The logic is clear: when private collectors conduct themselves not as owners but as custodians of a common cultural heritage, they extend the life of culture beyond its physical form. In a sense, they do what museums like the Grand Egyptian Museum attempt, but without the resources of a state. And while the GEM rightly draws praise for its scale and ambition, it also reveals the limits of national institutions. In Egypt, like in other places, heritage is inseparable from power: the choice of objects, the staging of grandeur, even the timing of gallery openings, are all freighted with political meaning. Ramses II does not merely welcome visitors, he legitimizes the present through the iconography of the past.
Private collectors, operating outside the direct apparatus of the state, offer something different. When they choose to collect responsibly, meaning with attention to provenance, accessibility, and public value, they create a counterbalance to the politicization of heritage. They also provide critical stopgaps in moments of institutional failure: wars, budget cuts, unrest, or simple neglect. During Syria’s civil war, networks supported in part by international collectors helped safeguard rare manuscripts and artifacts. These efforts may be imperfect, but they are often the only thing standing between an invaluable object and oblivion.
Not all collectors, naturally, act in the public interest. But, the growing number who do – Drahi, Ruffer, Ofer, and others – are redefining the role private art patronage plays in our cultural ecosystems. We are entering an era where cultural heritage no longer resides exclusively within national borders or within the walls of the museum. It circulates, it migrates, it exists in networks. Collectors who treat their holdings as provisional, as parts of a larger civic project are doing work that institutions alone cannot.
