Mile-High Musings on Arts, Culture, Creativity and Philanthropy

Winslow Homer's Lost on the Grand Banks, for which Bill Gates paid $36 million in 1998 A recent interview in the Financial Times with Bill Gates, that was widely quoted and shared in the media, including this piece in Hyperallergic , reported his equating of giving to a museum with blinding people. Seriously. Essentially he was citing the work of ethicist Peter Singer, whose work has fostered a new "effective altruism" movement, and posing the question that if a significant gift could prevent illnesses that lead to blindness, was giving that money instead to build a new wing of a museum effectively blinding people? [Gates] questions why anyone would donate money to build a new wing for a museum rather than spend it on preventing illnesses that can lead to blindness. “The moral equivalent is, we’re going to take 1 per cent of the people who visit this [museum] and blind them,” he says. “Are they willing, because it has the new wing, to take that risk? Hmm, maybe this ...