LEAP ventures into a new era of expert-led philanthropic commitment to renew artistic opportunity today. Our name and logo, designed by our partner Meiré und Meiré, is inspired by Yves Klein’s legendary action Leap into the Void (1960) –Harry Shunk captured the artist photographically in the very moment of his courageous and optimistic leap into freedom. LEAP’s philanthropic promise is inspired by this allegory and is committed ‘to protect the consistency of an artistic thought from pragmatic compromises’ (Susanne Pfeffer, Director, MMK Frankfurt & Member to the LEAP Advisory Board).

Our LEAP Art Foundation bridges budget gap experienced by public art institutions to facilitate ambitious artistic productions and exhibitions and to strengthen the critical progress of public collections. We create the opportunity for institutions to help them jump forward in their dialogue with visionary artists and to share the most exciting developments in contemporary art with the public. In this way, our philanthropic promise is to renew artistic possibilities and to pioneer the daring.

Our annual LEAP Open Call is open to all public art institutions, from the National Gallery to local art spaces, and collects project proposals that foreshadow the narrative of tomorrow’s art in its infancy. Our independent Advisory Board of Curators and Museum Directors leads on project selection; in an inclusive approach, our Advisory Board is joined by Trustees from the LEAP Art Foundation.

As a non-profit organisation, we allocate 100% of funds donated by LEAP Art Foundation to support our selected projects. Our Corporate Partners cover our operational costs and by empowering our initiative make an important contribution to our philanthropic commitment.

LEAP Art Foundation was created in 2021 by philanthropist, art historian and collector Bettina Böhm.

Bettina began her long-standing commitment to cultural philanthropy as a founding Board member of the Stiftung für das Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. She worked closely with Thomas Olbricht over several years to prepare and build out the Olbricht Collection, one of the most extensive private collections in Europe, for public display, and has also served as a Board member of artnet and as VIP Consultant for FRIEZE.

In 2015, Bettina founded Outset Germany_Switzerland, where she gathered a passionate circle of patrons to finance ambitious exhibitions, commissions and collection endowments across Germany, Switzerland and internationally under the guidance of an independent Advisory Board. Outset raised more than €2.3m in just five years and helped to finance such outstanding projects as Avery Singer’s entry that marked a new phase of her work. The first work of this creative phase was presented as a gift to the Museum Ludwig, Cologne (Avery Singer, Untitled, 2016). This was followed by grants such as Anne Imhof, 57th Venice Biennale, 2017 (awarded the Golden Lion) or the gifting of Love Story, a work by Candice Breitz, to the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

In founding LEAP in 2021, Bettina evolved her vision for an expert-led non-profit organisation to include new creative and agile fundraising models, ushering in a new era of private philanthropic engagement in the DACH region. The extensive networks established by Bettina across more than 30 years of relentless philanthropic engagement are at the very core of LEAP and its work.