Arts & Patrons helps patrons develop the confidence required to commit responsibly to artistic and cultural initiatives.
Our senior advisory works internationally with corporations, cultural institutions, arts businesses, governments, and family offices on judgement, patronage, stewardship and transmission.
Our role is to help clients determine what deserves commitment and create the conditions through which artistic excellence can flourish and endure across generations.
We work between these constituencies:
Artistic leadership
Boards
Executives
Families
Institutions
Patrons
Heritage
Contemporary audiences
Governments
Private capital
Mimi Durand Kurihara
Founder & Principal
Arts & Patrons brings together over twenty years of experience developed across three continents and fourteen countries, working with patrons, governments, foundations, artistic leaders, institutions and executives seeking to create lasting cultural value.
The firm combines international perspective, interdisciplinary know-how, nuanced judgement and long-term financial planning, and strategic thinking to help clients navigate consequential cultural decisions.
THE PATRONAGE CONFIDENCE REVIEW
Patrons, foundations, and institutions are presented with opportunities but lack confidence for purposeful commitment.
We provide risk assessments, impact assessments, and frameworks for ethical patronage and planning.
FOR CORPORATIONS
As corporations grow, pressures of scale, visibility, capital allocation, and internal cultural misalignment can challenge legitimacy and meaning. CEOs and leadership teams use arts patronage as both a cultural lever and a strategic lever to support business development.
As organisations grow, leadership increasingly faces questions that cannot be answered through commercial strategy alone.
Why and how should a company engage meaningfully with culture?
What responsibilities accompany cultural influence?
How can patronage survive leadership transitions and become part of institutional identity?
Arts & Patrons helps leadership teams transform sponsorship into stewardship and cultural engagement into enduring patronage.
FOR FOUNDATIONS AND FAMILIES
Patronage evolves and with generational change comes a responsibility of transparency in governance and purpose in initiatives.
The greatest challenge facing a family foundation is transmission.
Wealth can be transferred, purpose must be transmitted.
How can purpose survive generations?
What deserves long-term commitment?
What should future trustees inherit?
Arts & Patrons helps families and foundations develop the confidence required to make significant cultural commitments and create the stewardship structures through which those commitments can endure.
FOR THE ARTS AND CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS
As public funding recedes worldwide and patrons face growing demands for urgent support, cultural leaders are increasingly absorbed by fundraising without an articulate vision for their artistic ambitions.
Artistic excellence requires more than funding. It requires confidence, trust, stewardship and protected independence:
Fundraising and partnership evaluation
Communication of unique propositions within the cultural landscape
Governance structures that sustain trust between artists, institutions, and patrons
Renewal of audiences and patrons
Integrity and relevance
We help selected artists, and institutions strengthen relationships with patrons, foundations and governing bodies while preserving mission integrity and artistic leadership.
SELECTED ENGAGEMENTS
Arts & Patrons lists over 45 engagements across luxury, finance, culture, and institutions and families, on three continents.
Governments
Business Model for
Multigovernmental Orchestra and
Festival in the Caucasus
Structured, raised, and deployed a $150M cultural foundation and business ecosystem for an international orchestra and festival uniting six governments in the Caucasus region since 2019.
Key stakeholder issues:
Creating a sustainable long-term support system for artistic talent
Aligning public authorities, private capital, and artistic leadership
Regional mediation within a high-sensitivity geopolitical context
Establishing legitimacy for high end tourism
Key outcomes:
Raised and deployed $150M
Aligned 6 governments under a unified cultural governance framework
Secured global group partner
Connected major international streaming platform
Achieved long‑term financial sustainability through diversified revenue streams
Established an internationally recognised cultural institution with public-private legitimacy
Corporation
Global Luxury Group and Arts
Patronage in Japan
Designed and implemented a cultural legitimacy framework for a global luxury group’s multi‑year investment in contemporary artistic patronage in Japan.
Key stakeholder issues:
Establishing long-term cultural legitimacy and global positioning
Building intercultural understanding and trust
Integrating key patrons as partners according to their expertise
Integrating the luxury group with the founding patrons, and limiting additional funding sources
Key outcomes:
Deployed a cultural legitimacy framework for a global luxury group in Japan
Repositioned patronage from sponsorship to long‑term cultural stewardship
Established reputational and cultural legitimacy in a highly codified context
Developed a limited network of international patrons for an annual objective of 300k euros
Family Office
Family Office and Fine Crafts
Transmission in France and Italy
Structured a strategic cultural investment, partnership, and gifting framework for a private family supporting professional training in fine crafts in France and Italy.
Key stakeholder issues:
Aligning family values with capital deployment, institutional partnerships, and regional community impact
Legacy and intergenerational transmission
Partnership with local government
Key outcomes:
Designed strategic and sustainable cultural investment framework for a private family
Integrated local professional arts training programs with international scope in France and Italy
Established strategic roadmap for institutional partnerships through clear articulation of values and legacy