Jay Z to Donate to the Marina Abramovic Institute

Who doesn’t remember Jay Z‘s “Picasso Baby” performance at the Pace Gallery back in July? One of the event’s highlights was the special appearance by renowned performance artist Marina Abramovic. It now turns out that Jay and Ambramovic had a a meeting the day that led to a promise by Jay Z to contribute to the Marina Abramovic Institute with a monetary donation. This has been revealed by Roc Nation spokeswoman Jana Fleishman. According to Marina’s office director Giuliano Argenziano, no dollar amount was discussed during the meeting. Argenziano further stated that Hov intends to offer the institute some other form of ongoing support and compared the forthcoming relationship to Ms. Abramovic’s “long-durational” performance collaboration between Abramovic and Lady Gaga.

Ms. Abramovic has yet to break ground on her performance art school’s Rem Koolhaas-designed plant in Hudson, N.Y She has been actively trying to raise $20 million—roughly 10 percent of the endowment of Bard College—for it. This summer, the institute went to Kickstarter to raise $600,000, though it only reached that goal in its final days, with help from an MAI-branded viral video in which Lady Gaga studies “the Abramovic method,” which you can watch here.