Sir Anish Kapoor prints offered to museum fund donors

Signed prints by Sir Anish Kapoor and others are being offered as rewards to people who donate to a fund to help coronavirus-hit museums.

Lubaina Himid and Michael Landy prints can also be claimed by those who donate to the Art Fund's Together For Museums crowd funding appeal.

Rewards include a set of David Shrigley tea towels for a donation of £25.

Higher up the scale, donors who contribute £4,000 can receive a limited edition Kapoor print.

A £100 donation will earn a print of Landy's Look Around logo, while a signed Himid print will set you back £500.

The appeal hopes to raise £1m for UK museums and galleries facing financial problems due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Art Fund charity has already distributed £2.25m in "Respond and Reimagine" grants to help institutions cope.

Last month it decided to split its £200,000 Museum of the Year prize five ways, rather than give it to a single recipient.

According to the Art Fund's own research, six out of every 10 museums are worried about their survival.

More than 60% of workers in the sector fear for their jobs, while only a third of closed museums expect to reopen in the coming months.

Nine out of 10 institutions say that they will need to adapt and innovate in order to survive the virus and its aftermath.

More than 200 museums, galleries and historic houses took part in the survey, conducted this month by market research agency Opinium.

Harry Hill may seem an unlikely advocate for visiting museums. Yet the comedian says such institutions provide a much-needed "mental workout".

"If I'm ever stuck for an idea, or just not in a particularly sunny mood, I'll go to an art gallery or a museum, because museums are full of ideas," he told the PA news agency.

"Museums, on the whole, don't close," he said. "But we're in this bizarre situation where perhaps half of them are faced with closure if they don't get some sort of bailout.

"When this pandemic is over, the last thing we want is for none of these places to be open. We're not going to go abroad and we'll want something to do."

Over the last six months the Art Fund received funding applications from more than 450 organisations amounting to more than £16.9m.

The Postal Museum in London, the Roald Dahl Museum in Buckinghamshire and Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art are among the institutions to benefit from its latest round of grants.

Art Fund director Jenny Waldman said the "innovative" ideas put forward by museums had been "hugely inspiring" and that it had been "heartbreaking" not to be able to support them all.

"We are urging everyone who loves and uses museums to come together now to help so many more museums thrive," she continued.

Museums and galleries also have the option of applying for money from the £1.57bn Culture Recovery Fund that the government unveiled in July.

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