An analysis of the role of governments (particularly US and British) in imposing certain free market principles since the 1980s, consistent with neoliberalism, upon public art institutions and agencies. It charts a major shift over the past thirty yeas in the increasing prominence of public-private partnerships and museum funding, the phenomenon of museum board members donating their collections to public museums, corporate sponsorship and collecting, and the use of art as a form of ‘cultural capital’ for and legitimation by hedge fund billionaires and Russian oligarchs, etc.