WHEN Eli Broad, the art collector and philanthropist, decided to build a museum in downtown Los Angeles, he named it The Broad. That pretty much ruled out asking anybody else for money, said Barry Munitz, a governor of the Broad Foundation. The museum, about to break ground on a Diller Scofidio & Renfro building, will have an initial $200 million endowment and has no plans to seek outside funding, according to Joanne Hyler, who will be its director.

But there’s another Broad museum, this one nearing completion at Michigan State University, in East Lansing. Mr. Broad (pronounced Brode), a Michigan State alumnus, and his wife, Edythe, gave $28 million to that cause — far less than the cost of the museum’s new Zaha Hadid building. And that means the museum’s director, Michael Rush, has to raise money before the museum opens this year. “We still have a few million to go,” he said by phone.

But who will donate to a museum named for one of the wealthiest couples in America? (Its official name is the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.) As Lou Anna K. Simon, the president of Michigan State University, said at an event to publicize the museum, “Some people think Eli can just write another check.” Not only that, but the name on the door suggests that no mater how much a donor contributes, the credit will go to the Broads.

Luckily, Mr. Rush said, the university’s hundreds of thousands of alumni are known for their school spirit. It also helps that the museum is offering naming opportunities; one gallery will bear the name of Edward Minskoff, the New York real estate developer and a Michigan State graduate. Mr. Minskoff wrote in an e-mail that the Broad name, if anything, encouraged him to give. “Eli is one of the most important collectors in the world, and it will only serve to attract other prominent contributors,” he wrote.

Often, though, putting a wealthy donor’s name on the door discourages giving, according to Mr. Munitz and other experts. (He named the Menil Collection in Houston, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis as three museums facing that challenge.)

When Mr. Munitz was president of the J. Paul Getty Trust — endowed by the oil company founder — “it was hard to ask for money with a straight face,” he said. But the trust, he said, is not without need; it is wealthy enough “to do anything it wants to do, which is different from being able to do everything it wants to do.” These days, he said, it seeks donors for some purposes.

Fund-raising may be easier for an institution named for a less towering figure than J. Paul Getty or Eli Broad. The Skirball Cultural Center, a Jewish museum in Los Angeles, was named for Jack Skirball and Audrey Skirball-Kenis, wealthy Californians, but its director, Mr. Munitz said, “has always made it clear that the institutionwouldn’t survive and prosper without other major donors.” One such donor, Lloyd Cotsen, the former president of the skin care products company Neutrogena, endowed what is now known as the Cotsen Auditorium at the Skirball Cultural Center. “There wasn’t the sense that other donors would be in the Skirballs’ shadow,” said Mr. Munitz, who is the president of Mr. Cotsen’s foundation.

In Arkansas, the Crystal Bridges Museum was built with a gift from Alice Walton, an heir to the Wal-Mart fortune, and received $800 million in additional funds from the Walton Family Foundation. Don Bacigalupi, the museum’s director, said it had not been difficult to raise additional money. One reason, of course, is that the museum isn’t named Walton.

But even if it had been, Mr. Bacigalupi said, that might not have discouraged donors, because of excitement in the community about the project, which, he said, was fueled by the Walton association.

The museum has signed up 6,000 members, about twice as many as its top executives had expected, since it began its membership program last year. And many of those members gave far more than the $35 minimum — in some cases, thousands of dollars more. Asked if the donors were looking to curry favor with the Waltons — who control much of the economy of this part of Arkansas — Mr. Bacigalupi answered no. After all, being one of thousands of members is akin to being anonymous. Larger donors are not anonymous — the Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation gave $10 million to defray the cost of bringing school groups to the museum (even covering lunch and transportation). But Mr. Walker made his money as a Wal-Mart executive, and the Walkers are part of what Mr. Bacigalupi described as a group of prominent families who pitch in to support each other’ projects. He said the museum was benefiting from a “tradition of generosity” in northwest Arkansas.

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Developer Jorge Pérez is saddened by the controversy surrounding his $35 million naming gift to the MAM 

"Mademoiselle Pogany II" (1919) by Constantin Brancusi. The sculpture, made of veined marble on limestone and wood bases, is among the Modern works in the Ronald S. Lauder Collection. Source: Neue Galerie via Bloomberg

By Lance Esplund - Dec 14, 2011 1:38 PM ET

While a distracted art world picked over Art Basel Miami Beach, a real estate developer got the biggest bargain next door.

I mean Jorge M. Perez. For a mere $35 million gift in cash and art he got the Miami Art Museum to change its name to the Jorge M. Perez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County....

Welcome to the intersection of art, ego, philanthropy and jealousy. It’s where you’ll find the Jorge M. Perez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County.

My initial reaction to renaming the Miami Art Museum for Jorge Perez was negative. Why should our stunning new $225 million civic art museum — with $103 million coming from taxpayers — be named for any individual, no matter how generous his donation? The decision by MAM’s board of trustees to change the name struck me as weak-kneed and wrong-headed. And the requirement by Perez to do so as arrogant and self-aggrandizing. I said as much on TV.

But I’ve reconsidered. After speaking to Perez and looking at how other arts institutions are funded here and across the country, I’ve concluded that Perez should be thanked, not condemned for his $35 million gift to MAM. If the price is for the museum to bear his name, hang his art and be his legacy, well, why not? He’s certainly not the first South Florida art patron to make a deal like this. The Arsht Center? Taxpayers kicked in about $440 million toward the PAC and Adrienne Arsht got her name on it for $30 million, supplanting Carnival Cruise Lines, which had given $20 million.

The new Frost Museum of Science, to be built across from the Perez Art Museum, honors Pat and Phil Frost for their $35 million contribution. There appears to be a $35 million threshold here for naming rights, and Perez has met it, although he’s doing it on the installment plan — $20 million over 10 years and his $15 million art collection. Still, it all adds up to the requisite magic number. You can’t really change the rules in the middle of the game, which is what his critics seem to want.

Like those critics, there’s part of me that rebels against having Miami’s main civic art museum named for anyone except those who mainly paid for it. But we can’t really call it the Taxpayers’ Art Museum of Miami-Dade, can we? Many years ago when the Metropolitan in New York or the Art Institute of Chicago or the Louvre in Paris or Prado in Madrid were created they were paid for by the cities that built them because they were tangible symbols of culture and achievement. Wealthy art lovers contributed money and works of art, but didn’t expect civic museums to carry their names. A wing, a gallery, a plaza, yes. The entire museum, no.

But times have changed. Museums along with other cultural, academic, medical and academic institutions are now more often than not paid for by a major donor who gets his or her name on the edifice. Locally, think of the Miller School of Medicine of the University of Miami ($100 million from the Lennar founder Leonard Miller and family); The Frost Art Museum at Florida International University (Pat and Phil Frost once again), the Lowe Art Museum at UM and the Bass Museum on Miami Beach. Joe Robbie Stadium. There are, of course, exceptions. Lin and the late Ted Arison started and continue to sustain the New World Symphony.

Jorge Perez tells me some of the furor over the MAM renaming may have to do with his Hispanic heritage. “You know, the name Perez is new to Miami’s philanthropic society,” he said. “I think we need names of Latin descent to go hand in hand with great Anglo and Jewish names that have shown generosity in the past.”

It’s possible there could be an anti-Cuban tinge to the criticism, although I don’t see it. Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz, prominent art collectors who’ve been outspoken about the MAM name change, are proudly Cuban American. I suspect some part of the criticism is because of Perez’s role as a major real-estate developer who got very rich by helping overheat the housing market . But as he points out, when it cooled down he lost three-quarters of his wealth. And still ponied up $20 million in cash and art worth $15 million. “That’s art I look at every day,” he says, “art that I have an emotional attachment to.”

He’ll be able to see it, as will we, at the Jorge M. Perez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County. Got a problem with that? I did at first, but I’m OK with it now.

Jorge Pérez has made what appears to be a generous gift to the Miami Art Museum, an act that has been billed as one of the most generous in the city’s philanthropic history. In return, the museum sold him its name. Before we break out the Champagne, let’s do the math on this gift.

The headline gift totals $35 million: $20 million in cash and $15 million in art from his collection. Let’s start with the cash, because that’s what the museum needs immediately to fund construction of its new building. When the project began in 2005, Mr. Pérez made a $5 million pledge, which remains part of the $10 million cash gift he proposes to pay by 2012. He also proposes to pay another $10 million in 2022, 10 years from now, so let’s say the present value is $5 million. That’s a cash total of $15 million. This compares to Miami-Dade giving $100 million of its citizens’ money and the city giving land worth $50 million for a total of $150 million. Mr. Pérez’ gift amounts to 10 percent of Miami’s gift and he gets the name of the museum. And this doesn’t consider the risk of a substantial loss of funding from existing and future donors. Something doesn’t compute.

The $15 million worth of art was added to bring the headline gift to a level commensurate with the Frosts’ and Adrienne Arsht’s recent cash gifts. Until now, MAM’s capital campaign policy was “cash only.” Any professional fund raiser will tell you that a gift of art (which the museum can’t sell for ethical reasons) doesn’t pay for construction costs and doesn’t count towards naming rights.

When the MAM board approved the renaming there was no discussion of the longterm implications of the name change. No one mentioned that the American Association of Museum Directors, which accredits MAM, cannot find a single instance of a civic art museum selling its name to a donor, for any amount of money.

MAM’s leadership and Mr. Pérez have turned a deaf ear to the outpouring of negative responses to the name change, ignoring the constituency they ostensibly serve. The citizens of this great community paid for the museum and it should bear their name. How about a wing, Mr. Pérez? That would compute.

Howard S. Frank, Miami

But not everyone is happy that the institution, now known as the Miami Art Museum, will be recast as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County to recognize Mr. Pérez’s $35 million gift in cash and art.

Four board members have resigned in protest. Several are threatening to rescind their contributions. Protest e-mails to museum officials have complained that an institution being built on public land and largely financed by taxpayers should not be named for an individual, no matter how generous.

“Name a plaza or a wing or the building,” said Rubén A. Rodríguez, one of the trustees who resigned, “but not the institution.”

The naming and renaming of institutions, arenas, even bridges, after people, to raise money or recognize civic contributions, typically engender little fuss. (Think of the Guggenheim or the Getty, not the former Brendan Byrne Arena.) There was hardly a peep when the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center became the David H. Koch Theater in 2008, after Mr. Koch’s pledge of $100 million.

But in an era when the need for cultural largesse by the wealthy is only expanding, there has been an unusual level of opposition here to the idea of renaming a community resource after an individual patron of the arts.

Is it the timing? The size of the gift? Mr. Pérez’s career as a major developer here? Or perhaps jealousy on the part of others whose own major contributions to the arts have never secured such a high-profile designation?

Museum officials say they’ve been surprised by the community reaction to the name change, though they caution against exaggerating the response. The change, after all, they said, was approved last week by a vote of the museum board; of the 35 members present, only 4 voted against, with 1 abstention.

Thomas Collins, the museum’s director, said the institution was fortunate that Mr. Pérez, a trustee, stepped up to take a lead role in its $220 million capital campaign to bolster its endowment and construct the new building, to be completed in 2013. Mr. Pérez’s $35 million gift includes a pledge of $20 million, along with $15 million worth of Latin American art, which he collects avidly.

“He has been part of the governance and leadership of the institution,” Mr. Collins said. “He has made a major commitment of fine art to the museum. Institutions have been named for people who’ve done just one of those things.”

Many institutions have taken to naming just about anything — hallways, lobbies, staircases — to raise money. In Miami naming has become something of a rage. In 2008 the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts — named for the cruise line — was renamed for the businesswoman and philanthropist Adrienne Arsht after her $30 million gift. When the Miami Science Museum opens its new building in 2014, it will be renamed the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science. There is also the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami and the Frost Museum of Art at Florida International University.

Naming is often a prickly issue for an institution, since it links it to a person in the public’s mind.

Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, said that institutions have to be careful about whom they agree to be associated with. “I’m not sure anyone would want to have the Bonnie and Clyde Opera Company,” he said.

Sometimes property has to be unnamed. The Vilar Grand Tier at the Metropolitan Opera House, for example, went back to being just the Grand Tier after its benefactor, Alberto W. Vilar, failed to come through on his financial commitments.

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Billionaire condo developer Jorge Perez gave a$35 million naming donation to Miami Art Museum. (Miami Herald file photo)

"Joining the ranks of major givers in Miami, developer Jorge Pérez has pledged to donate $35 million in cash and art from his personal collection to the new Miami Art Museum, which will bear his name when it opens in two years.

The donation includes $5 million that Pérez has already pledged and partially paid; an additional $15 million for the capital campaign and $15 million worth of Latin American art to be chosen by the museum."