Celebrities Who Built Public Arts Spaces

Founder. The American actor Sam Wanamaker set up the Shakespeare Globe Trust in 1970 and spent more than two decades raising money and fighting planning battles to rebuild Shakespeare's open-air theatre on Bankside, near its original site. He died in 1993, four years before Shakespeare's Globe opened. The indoor candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, added in 2014, carries his name, and the Globe is now one of London's busiest theatres.

Founder and funder. George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, paid for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opened in Los Angeles's Exposition Park on 22 September 2026 after years of delays and a move from Chicago. Its collection, largely his own, mixes Norman Rockwell paintings, comic art and children's book illustration with film material. Critics are divided on the high-and-low mix, but the surrounding park is free to all.

Collector and co-founder. Cheech Marin spent decades buying Chicano art when major museums ignored it, and in June 2022 the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture opened in a former public library in Riverside, California. It is a partnership with the Riverside Art Museum, which runs it, and the city. His collection of roughly 700 works is the core, and its exhibitions now tour nationally.

Founding director. Laurence Olivier led the National Theatre company from its first season at the Old Vic in 1963 until 1973, building the ensemble and repertoire that justified a permanent home. The South Bank building opened in 1976 with its largest auditorium named the Olivier. He was not the architect or funder, but without his decade of work there would have been no national company to house.

Company founder. Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop moved into the run-down Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1953, cleaning and repairing it themselves, and turned it into the home of Oh, What a Lovely War! and A Taste of Honey. Her later Fun Palace idea of a free, open arts space for everyone still inspires an annual community festival. The Theatre Royal is still producing work in east London, with a statue of her outside.

Artistic director. Alan Ayckbourn ran Scarborough's theatre-in-the-round for decades and led its move in 1996 into a converted Odeon cinema, now the Stephen Joseph Theatre, named after his mentor. He premiered most of his more than eighty plays there before London, giving a seaside town a producing theatre with national reach. It remains open year-round.

Collector and founder. Peggy Guggenheim bought the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on Venice's Grand Canal in 1949 and soon began opening her home and its collection of Cubist, Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist art to visitors. Since her death in 1979 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has run it as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, one of Italy's most visited modern art museums. Her role was taste and nerve: she bought Pollock and Ernst when few would.

Founder and funder. Damien Hirst converted a row of former theatre-scenery workshops in Vauxhall into Newport Street Gallery, which opened in 2015 and charges no admission. It shows works from his own large collection of other artists' work, as well as his own, in shows that are often surprisingly scholarly. For an artist associated with the market, it is a notable gift of free gallery space to south London.

Founders and funders. Gilbert & George opened the Gilbert & George Centre in April 2023 in a converted brewery building off Brick Lane, a few streets from the Spitalfields house where they have lived since the 1960s. Entry is free and it shows their work in rotating exhibitions. It is a modest space, but it ties their art permanently to the East End neighbourhood it so often depicts.

Founder and funder. Tracey Emin opened TKE Studios in a former Victorian bathhouse in Margate, her home town, in March 2023, offering affordable studios and a free residency programme for emerging artists, which she has linked to her recovery from cancer. Public access is limited to seasonal shows, fairs and events rather than daily opening, so check before travelling. Its value is in keeping artists working in the town.

Founder. Theaster Gates bought a derelict 1923 bank on Chicago's South Side from the city for one dollar and reopened it in 2015 as the Stony Island Arts Bank, run by his Rebuild Foundation. It houses archives including Johnson Publishing's library, the record collection of house music pioneer Frankie Knuckles and glass slides from the University of Chicago, alongside exhibitions and events. It is one of the clearest cases of an artist's fame bringing a building back into public use.

Co-founder. Mark Bradford, one of America's most celebrated painters, co-founded Art + Practice in 2014 with collector Eileen Harris Norton and activist Allan DiCastro in Leimert Park, the Los Angeles neighbourhood where his mother ran a hair salon. It offers free exhibitions, often in partnership with major museums, and supports young people leaving foster care. The neighbourhood link is the point.

Founder. Artist Rick Lowe started Project Row Houses in 1993 by restoring a block of shotgun houses in Houston's historically Black Third Ward and handing them to artists for rotating installations. It has since grown to include housing for young mothers and community programmes, and earned Lowe a MacArthur fellowship. Less famous than others here, he is often cited as the model that celebrity-led spaces follow.

Builder; now run by his estate. Prince built Paisley Park, his studio and performance complex in Chanhassen, Minnesota, in 1987, and recorded and threw famous late-night concerts there. Since October 2016, months after his death, it has been open to visitors as a museum, with tours of the studios and soundstage. It is a private creation rather than a civic one, but it remains a working arts venue and a rare preserved musician's workplace.

Funder. Oprah Winfrey gave 21 million dollars to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, which opened in 2016, and its 350-seat Oprah Winfrey Theater hosts films, talks and performances. She also lent objects for its exhibitions. The museum is the Smithsonian's own creation, and she is a major donor rather than a founder, which is exactly why the distinction matters on this list.