Even without her spectacular orange taffeta outfit with ample pink sleeves, Marina Kellen French would not have gone unnoticed at the opening of the exhibition devoted to Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli. At the Museum of Decorative Arts (MAD), on July 4, American National Day, this millionaire was not the inviting power, but almost. It is this dapper octogenarian who, signing a check for 1 million euros in 2019, financed the essential restoration of the six thousand drawings and numerous dresses by Schiaparelli from the collections of the Parisian establishment.
The MAD is just one of many places where the heiress of the Arnhold bank, founded in Dresden in the 19e century and resold in 2015 to the Blackstone investment fund, makes its large contribution. In the United States, his family supports Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and a New York hospital specializing in surgery. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is also she who has financed since 2021 the salary of the director of the museum, Max Hollein. Marina Kellen French is one of those trustees, those benefactors who govern cultural life in the United States.
Allergic to taxes, rich Americans have set up foundations without inheritance tax or any levy on capital gains, against the obligation to distribute the equivalent of 5% of their capital each year. But a good trustee is not content to pay its share to the community and toast at openings in a custom dress. “For her, patronage is not a hobby, insists Olivier Gabet, director of the Museum of Decorative Arts. Like all American philanthropists, she is a stakeholder in the places she helps. » Before financing the Metropolitan Opera, Marina Kellen French, for example, took courses in musicology.
A desperate love for France
The use that the institutions make of his money is also important to him. “She didn’t contribute to the Villa Albertine right away, she first gauged us, surveyed us, reports Gaëtan Bruel, cultural adviser in New York, who was able to convince the patron to support this artist residency created on the initiative of the French Embassy. It helps us decisively, by introducing ourselves to people who matter, by sending a signal to the community of friends on the Upper East Side. »
Accustomed to spending her summers in the troglodyte house bought by her parents in Castellaras, in the Alpes-Maritimes, Marina Kellen French also supports the Festival international d’art lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence, as well as the castle of Vaux-le -Viscount, where she contributed, in 2017, to the restoration of the immense Hercules of gilded bronze, which shines again at the bottom of the park.
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