Whitney Closes Altria Branch, as Corporate Funder Bows Out
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The Whitney Museum of American Art branch at Altria, located on Park Avenue at 42nd Street, will close permanently on January 29, the Whitney announced Friday. Altria (formerly known as Philip Morris Companies) is undergoing a corporate restructuring and, as a result, moving its headquarters out of Manhattan.
In 25 years, the Altria branch has presented 110 exhibitions and hundreds of performances and events, the museum said. A book looking back at these exhibitions will be published this spring by Yale University Press.
Altria’s corporate restructuring means that its philanthropy will no longer be focused on arts and culture. In recent years, Altria has distributed as much as $24 million a year, much of it to cultural organizations. The loss of such a major corporate sponsor puts pressure on institutions to find new sources of funding –– not an easy task when the economy seems likely headed into a recession.
