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When Francis Bacon died, his estate passed to his sole heir, John Edwards, who was his companion and friend for the last sixteen years of his life. In 1998, Edwards donated the Reece Mews studio to Dublin City’s Hugh Lane Gallery.
Following John Edwards’ death in 2003, a substantial part of his estate was left to the benefit of philanthropic works in the name of Francis Bacon. The Estates of Francis Bacon and John Edwards have funded the catalogue raisonné of the works of Francis Bacon and a research grant for the artist’s biography and have supported a variety of exhibitions, publications, films and scholarly research into the painter and his times.
The Estate of Francis Bacon has published several books with the aid of funding from the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation.
The École du Louvre is a higher education establishment founded in 1882. It offers undergraduate and post-graduate courses in history of art, archaeology, epigraphy, anthropology and museum studies. It is located in the Flore wing of the Louvre, in Paris.
In 2016, the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation concluded an agreement with the École du Louvre to set up a research scholarship for PhD students. Every four years, a grant is awarded to a doctoral student who is researching Francis Bacon or a topic directly connected with him.
In 2020, an ambitious architectural project entitled ‘École du Louvre 2021‒2022’ was made possible by an exceptional act of patronage by Majid Boustany, the founder and president of the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation. The vast programme of works encompassed redevelopment and refurbishment of the library including its documentation, IT services and cafeteria, and the creation of a research centre.
Majid Boustany added the finishing touch to the project by giving the École du Louvre the first artworks to be displayed in its study and research facilities: two sculptures by the British artist Antony Gormley for the library; an easel that belonged to Francis Bacon to stand in the library entrance hall; and an artwork by François Morellet and a sculpture by César for display in the Jaujard Hall. He also endowed the new library with an extensive collection of books on Francis Bacon, making it one of France’s largest repositories of publications about the painter.
Formerly a royal palace, the Louvre has been bound up with the history of France for more than eight centuries. The Musée du Louvre was founded in 1793. From the outset, it was intended to be an all-encompassing art museum.
Today, the Louvre is the world’s most visited museum. Its collections comprise just under 500,000 artworks, of which over 30,000 are on display. It has nine curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities, Near Eastern Antiquities and Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities rub shoulders with more modern collections such as Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, Prints and Drawings and Islamic Art, and now the Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art, founded in 2022.
The Louvre was one of Francis Bacon’s favourite Paris museums, and the Majid Boustany Fund was set up in 2020 by the president of the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation within the Musée du Louvre Endowment Fund to help fund the conservation and restoration of the masterpieces belonging to the Louvre that Bacon most admired during his frequent visits, some of which were sources of inspiration for his own pictures.
In 2023, Majid Boustany added a further tier to his support for the Musée du Louvre by endowing two awards in perpetuity within the Majid Boustany Fund: a research grant entitled the Majid Boustany Research Scholarship, which is awarded to PhD students from prestigious French graduate schools who are working on a thesis in the field of art history, archaeology or museum studies, and the Denon Prize, named after Dominique-Vivant Denon, the first director of the Musée du Louvre, who held the post under Napoleon Bonaparte and pioneered both museum practice and Egyptology. The Denon Prize is designed to enable young scholars to fund the publication of their PhD thesis. It is the first prize to be implemented at the Musée du Louvre.
The University of Oxford is a unique institution. Its 900-year teaching history makes it the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
In 2025, the president of the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation created a scholarship for students applying to study for a Master’s degree in History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of Oxford. The Majid Boustany Oxford Graduate Scholarship is jointly administered with Christ Church College and covers tuition fees for students who are British citizens and have chosen to focus on painting and/or drawing from 1900 to the present day.
Since 2001, Francis Bacon’s recreated Reece Mews studio has been on display to the public at the Hugh Lane Gallery, in Dublin. The contents of the studio are a vital resource for art historians and other scholars conducting research on the artist.
In 2017, the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation entered into a partnership with Villa Arson, based in Nice. This contemporary art institution combines, on one site, a national school of art, a contemporary art centre, an artists’ residence and a dedicated library.
The Foundation awards a scholarship every two years to an artist who has graduated from Villa Arson having obtained the DNSEP diploma in recognition of their artistic practice in painting or drawing.
This financial support will provide essential help for young artists at the beginning of their professional lives and artistic careers.
