David Gonski on the art of parting the rich from their money for a good cause

The first rule of arts fundraising, says Sydney philanthropist and business leader David Gonski, is to welcome all legitimate gifts, no matter how small.

The second is never to judge the motives of the giver, no matter how rich.

Giving to a good cause is joyous, says David Gonski.Credit: Steven Siewert

“If a person’s doing it because they want an Order of Australia, or they want to get well known, good luck to them, that’s ambition, that’s fine,” he says.

“I encourage people to put their names to what they are doing and be proud of it, and be involved as well. It’s one of the most joyous things you can do. If you have extra money, there is no point just keeping it. You can’t take it with you when you go.”

Gonski is in the dining room of MOD. Dining, perched in the Art Gallery of NSW’s new glass pavilion overlooking the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney and Woolloomooloo.

Few visitors in the expansive halls of Sydney Modern pay the neat man in suit and tie much heed, but Gonski is among a handful of individuals most responsible for the building in which they stand: a new museum designed as an architectural showpiece for the public who enter it as much as for the art it houses.

The new wing at the Art Gallery of NSW.Credit:

Eight years ago, he convinced the Coalition government of Mike Baird to greenlight the gallery’s $344 million expansion, the largest cultural project since the Sydney Opera House.

He then helped rally Sydney’s wealthy to fund $100 million of its costs in a groundbreaking public-private partnership subsequently adopted as a template for the National Gallery of Victoria’s expansion, The Fox.

And, yet, his name is not emblazoned on the walls of the building. It bears an Indigenous name – Naala Badu – and no gallery is named for him. On a plaque near the entrance, he and his wife, dermatologist Orli Wargon, are listed among many others as founding donors of the ground-level Indigenous Yiribana Gallery. The Lowy Gonski Gallery sits in the original Walter Liberty Vernon-designed building.

When the ribbon was finally cut on his beloved Sydney Modern, Gonski was in house quarantine with COVID. “I still remember when I left Mike Baird’s office, absolutely, going down in the lift and walking out, and realising how much had to be privately raised to build the new gallery,” Gonski says. “And here we are, in this beautiful building, delivered on time and on budget.”

David Gonski served as president of the AGNSW Trust for 19 years across two terms. Credit: Steven Siewert

Gonski’s second term as president of the Art Gallery of NSW board of trustees came to an end in December. The board is responsible for the gallery’s strategic direction as well as overseeing the management of its collection and the foundation responsible for fundraising and investments.

Archibald Prize season is under way, but he will sit on the sidelines. Gonski’s successor, Michael Rose, now has the job of tallying the votes of gallery trustees on Friday and announcing the winning portraitist.

Gonski enjoyed the circus but understood its limitations: “One minute you’re important, the next minute, having announced the winner, no one’s interested in you,” he says. “It took me at least three Archibalds to realise that’s what it was. No one even asked my opinion afterwards. They were gone.”

As chair for two separate terms, totalling 19 years, Gonski co-captained the prestigious institution under the directorship of the irrepressible Edmund Capon and, from 2012, the scholarly Michael Brand.

Edmund Capon in front of Cy Twombly’s Three Studies from the Temeraire.Credit: Jon Reid

He was particularly taken by Capon’s audacity and cheek. He remembers Capon rolling out the red carpet for the late comedian Barry Humphries one day, and having to field a call from an eagle eye in the premier’s office who observed Capon had raised flags that by government decree should have been flying at half-mast. Gonski feigned ignorance.

In 2004, Capon convinced Gonski and the gallery’s trustees to spend about $4.5 million to acquire a triptych by American artist Cy Twombly that Gonski did not personally admire, and which had invited comparisons with the National Gallery of Australia’s purchase of Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles.

“Are you sure?” Gonski asked Capon. He was persuaded and now loves the painting. “I am not sure whether that is because I associate it so closely with Edmund or whether it is just so compelling.”

While the old Renaissance painters had their aristocratic patrons, Gonski is the modern face of arts boards governance, a model of consensus building, family legacy and investment that has come under sustained pressure as the geopolitical shockwaves from the war in Gaza have ricocheted across the world.

Dumplings at MOD. Dining.Credit: Steven Siewert

Gonski sits down for lunch with the Herald the same day as western Sydney artist Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino are named Australia’s representatives for the Venice Biennale.

Six days later, Creative Australia’s invitation is withdrawn, prompting protests, resignations and petitions. The aftershocks have yet to subside.

Many of Sydney’s biggest arts benefactors are Jewish, like Gonski, and some have exited the arts world amid claims of antisemitism and counter claims from pro-Palestinian voices of censorship. It’s prompted profound reflection on the influence of philanthropy versus artistic expression.

Gonski’s advice to his fellow philanthropists has been to “stay on the field while the ball is in play”. It’s his view that withdrawing from the field means those with “antagonising views” have won.

MOD. Dining’s crispy eggplant.Credit: Steven Siewert

While philanthropists prioritise the nurturing of artistic talent, Gonski believes boards of publicly funded institutions have a wider obligation to serve the public interest. The institution is responsible for what is shown and must accept that responsibility. That’s not censorship, he insists, but care, risk management and due diligence.

Gonski remains engaged with public life and has been appointed co-patron alongside Rhoda Roberts of the NAISDA Dance College, Australia’s leading First Nation’s arts training organisation. His name has been raised as a future chair of Opera Australia.

The much troubled national opera performing arts company is now without a chief executive or artistic director. It’s had two chairs in three years, and discontent is brewing around Rod Sims, its current chair.

“I love the concept of giving back, I genuinely do,” Gonski says. “I often suspect that I get more out of the giving than what I have given.”

Satay skewers at MOD. Dining.Credit: Steven Siewert

Gonski keeps to sparkling mineral water, he has afternoon meetings to keep. Asked for lunch recommendations, Gonski is unfamiliar with the Asian fusion menu of MOD. chef Sushil Aryal, though he has dined here several times.

“I was here usually to duchess somebody who hopefully would give us some money.” He smiles. “I wasn’t concentrating on what I was eating. I was looking to the results.”

Gonski’s bowl of chicken and chives dumplings, dressed in chilli oil and black vinegar, arrives first. Then a small plate of three chicken satay sticks. My batons of crispy eggplant come with a delicious chilli caramel. But, as in previous outings at MOD., eating is not the main game.

No one can read the room like Gonski can, a friend of his later assures me. “Politicians are motivated by venal desires; he is not beholden by anything to anyone. Whatever he leads, he works in their best interests. He’s like a great rabbi, he takes a sniff of the wind and works out what is going on.”

Lunch at MOD. Dining

Crispy eggplant $26

Jasmine rice $6

Satay chicken skewers $24

Chicken dumpling $22

Total: $78

In the weeks since we sat down for lunch, the gallery’s director is named as Maud Page, the institution’s first female director. I subsequently ask Gonski what he thinks of the appointment. He is delighted. “It is the right choice at the right time. Maud will be very successful taking the gallery to new heights.”

Brand was “a joy to work with, and he led us as a group with enormous focus, intelligence and decency”.

A former corporate lawyer and merchant banker, now company director, Gonski has sat on some 40 boards of business and not-for-profits, including Sydney Theatre Company, chair to theatre’s dream team of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, and the National Institute of Dramatic Art.

Paul Keating tapped him for his board “apprenticeship” at Bundanon, chairing the trust overseeing the south coast property that Arthur and Yvonne Boyd gave the nation. It’s Arthur Boyd that Gonski credits for expanding his way of seeing.

Boyd would stand at his easel and challenge Gonski to see beyond the first blush of colour in the bushland. Where Gonski could pick up six types of greens, Boyd could see 10.

They once inspected a venue at Callan Park as a possible art gallery dedicated to the work of Boyd, only for the project to fall over when the artist objected to the space’s disrupted view of an old chimney. Gonski shrugs.

Where business can be a shrewd numbers game, art turns on the tiniest slash of colour. It’s an intellectual puzzle that fascinates but is not without sentiment.

The Gonskis have been art collectors for 35 to 40 years. “People ask, ‘do you change them?’ ‘No, I don’t.’ Each have special value, a 30th wedding anniversary and obviously anything by Arthur Boyd is very special.”

Gonski was seven when his family moved to Sydney from Cape Town in 1961, in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, in which 250 people were killed or injured in violent anti-apartheid demonstrations.

His father, Alexander, was a neurosurgeon, a scholarship boy who relied on benefactors to send him to university to study science then medicine. “My life was a lot easier than it might have been otherwise, if it hadn’t been for his hard work and the philanthropy of others,” he notes. “Philanthropy often can improve the lives of a number of generations.”

From his mother, Helene, came his love for the arts. She would entice the young Gonski to visit the AGNSW with offers of ice-cream, the same trick he uses on his four grandchildren. “Art has always lifted me.”

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