Private collectors increase amounts of galleries globally

While plenty of museums in Britain are funded by government grants and charity, there are an increasing volume of private collectors building impressive exhibits for their personal sets of art.

The trend isn't limited to Great Britain as numerous collectors around the globe are equally choosing to build their own museums along with donating to public museums.

In the last decade galleries of modern-day and contemporary artwork have multiplied around the world. Innovative establishments have developed in Venice, Los Angeles, Doha and Beijing.

Even Camden has witnessed a surge of enterprise -- the Dairy Art Centre opened in April 2014, designed over the 12,500 sq ft of an old milk warehouse, with an exhibition from the Swiss artist John Armleder. An equivalent size area, The David Roberts Art Foundation (Draf), opened in 2013 inside of a cul-de-sac at the Mornington Crescent end of Camden High Street. They joined up with the Zabludowicz Collection, which was located in an old Methodist chapel on Prince of Wales Road from 2007.

All three are private galleries that exhibit the goods of high-powered British collectors: Frank Cohen, Nicolai Frahm (whose collections are housed in the Dairy), Anita Zabludowicz and David Roberts, respectively. Each is devoid of government control, without any position for DCMS mandates or Arts Council hand-outs, and are accountable only to the enthusiasts which have created them.

The private museum strategy is behind the recent boom in museum-development worldwide. A considerable selection of these are bigger than Camden's 3.

The Broad, slated to launch in Los Angeles in late 2014, is a 120,000 sq ft building developed by the architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro which will display the gallery of the multi-millionaire
Eli Broad. The Mexican collector (and wealthiest individual on earth) Carlos Slim launched the Soumaya Museum in 2011, which has Rodin's 'The Thinker' positioned in its lobby.

The phenomenon has even gained popularity in a major way in Asia. Museums like Budi Tek's Yuz Foundation in Indonesia and the Chinese collector Li Bing's Beijing He Jing Yuan Art Museum are simply two of many that have opened or are under construction. Include related staples like the Saatchi Gallery in London and the Rubell Family Collection in Miami and it is apparent that, almost undetected, we've entered a fresh age of museums.