Property

Tangible personal property

Tangible personal property, such as artwork, may be donated to the Museum during your lifetime or by bequest. The Museum must give special consideration to such gifts before it can accept them, and we advise you to contact us if you are contemplating a gift of tangible personal property to the Museum. (See note on gifts of artwork below.)

A lifetime donor of tangible personal property held long term and accepted by the Museum is potentially entitled to claim an immediate income-tax charitable deduction and may not be subject to capital gains taxes. Whether the deduction is at fair market value or is limited to the amount of your adjusted basis in the donated property, however, will depend on whether the Museum can be expected to use the property in a manner related to its tax-exempt mission.

If a donor makes a gift of tangible personal property during lifetime and the use of the contributed property is related to the Museum’s exempt purposes (e.g., gifts of modern or contemporary artwork accepted into our collection), the donor is generally entitled to claim an income-tax charitable deduction for the full fair market value of the property (up to 30% of adjusted gross income, or AGI, with a five-year carry-forward period). If the use of the contributed property is unrelated to the Museum’s exempt purposes, or if the donor held the property for 12 months or less before making the donation, then the donor’s income-tax charitable deduction is limited to the lesser of the donor’s adjusted basis in the property or its fair market value.

Note on gifts of artwork

If you are considering donating a work of art to the Museum, please contact a curator in the appropriate curatorial department to talk about your proposed gift. The Museum has curatorial departments devoted to Architecture and Design, Drawings and Prints, Film, Media and Performance, Painting and Sculpture, and Photography.

Real property

Real property or a cooperative apartment may be donated to the Museum during a donor’s lifetime or at death. Because the Museum is unlikely to make use of the property, it will likely be sold, and depending on the circumstances, you may conclude it is more efficient to instruct your executor or trustee to sell the property and distribute the net proceeds to the Museum. As with tangible personal property, it is important for you to let us know in advance if you are thinking about a gift of real property or a cooperative apartment. Because real estate and cooperative apartments are relatively complex assets, a number of considerations will determine the exact terms and structure of the gift. If we are amenable to accepting the property, it will be necessary under the “assignment of income” doctrine that the property not be subject to a contract of sale when we take ownership.

Have you already included MoMA in your estate plans?