Frank Bowling Foundation To Formally Launch In London On June 24
8June 16, 2026
TheFrank BowlingFoundation, which celebrates the legacy of the eponymous ninety-two-year-old British artist, is set to launch in London on June 24, 2026. Supported by a substantial gift from Bowling comprising paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and archival material spanning his life and professional endeavors, the foundation will operate as a charity with themissionof enhancing access and conducting outreach for art and art education.
Originally set up as a Charitable Incorporated Organization on24 January 2024, the foundation’s formal launch aligns with the unveiling of its first public initiative “Frank Bowling: Driven to Draw,” anexhibitionopening at the Royal Drawing School on June 25. Bowling’s body of work holds great significance in the realm of Transatlantic abstraction, and he has spent the past seven decades traveling and working across London, New York, and everywhere in between. A majorretrospectiveof his work was shown at the Tate Britain in 2019.
The foundation’s establishment solidifies some of Bowling’s longstanding philanthropic commitments, including scholarship programs and bursaries at University of the Arts London and Hampstead School of Art, alongside support for the Whitechapel Gallery and South London Gallery, among other institutions. It also includes his support for the CIRCA PIPELINE initiative, which aimed to raise £500,000 in art supplies for 100 state primary schools across the UK.
“This charity will support a mission that has always been close to my heart – and which has never been more important,” said Bowling, in a press statement first published in ArtDependence Magazine. “There is a wealth of creative talent out there. We must empower people, especially children, to create.”