New York · Nonprofit
INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC
INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC (New York) receives grants from 50 organizations whose IRS filings report $2,788,030 to it, the largest being ROY LICHTENSTEIN FOUNDATION ($590,000). 34 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $178k
- Funders on record
- 50
- Grants received
- $2.8M
- Net assets
- $481k
What International Foundation for Art Research Inc does
Mission
Educational and research organization dedicated to integrity in the visual arts. Ifar is concerned with issues of attribution/authenticity, provenance, theft, ownership, and other scholarly, legal and ethical issues involving art objects.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
On its FY2025 return the organization reported a significant change in how it conducts a program.
In 2025, the organization made the decision to cease conducting its authentication, online education, and website-based programs. These programs were terminated in june 2025.
Its own explanation, from Schedule O of that return (Part III, line 3).
Authentication and researchsince its founding in 1969, ifar has offered an art authentication research service to provide the public with scholarly, objective, and unbiased research and opinions on works of art whose attribution is in question or whose existence is unknown to specialists in the field. As a nonprofit organization that neither buys, sells, nor appraises artworks for monetary value, ifar has no vested interest in the outcome of its research. The service is available to museums, other institutions, galleries, and individuals, but they must be the owners of the artworks or their authorized representatives. Ifar conducts provenance and other research on artworks, and they are also examined by specialists. If warranted, scientific tests are also performed. At the end of its research, ifar issues a written report for the owner detailing its findings. Ifar reserves the right to publish its research, and over the years, has been responsible for exposing numerous art fraud scams and discovering many previously unknown artworks.
$55,052 spent$41,160 earned by the program26% of program spendingEducational programsbeginning in 2024, ifar launched a new initiative called ifar education, comprising fee-based online courses on provenance, fakes and forgeries, and ethical and informed art collecting. In 2025, ifar continued this initiative, offering two sessions of its six-week online class, introduction to provenance research, in which students from across the globe learned how to investigate, develop, and interpret provenance narratives for artworks from antiquity to the present day.
$105,105 spent$47,356 earned by the program49% of program spendingWebsite initiativesifar offers three major educational resources on its website: the art law & cultural property database, the catalogues raisonns database, and the provenance guide. The two databases, launched in 2008, are continuously updated. The art law & cultural property database is a compendium of case law and international cultural property legislation dealing with international and domestic legislation and legal claims relating to art ownership & export, restitution, repatriation, and authenticity of art objects. The art law database is currently a subscription-based service, though users can also access it for 2- or 4-hour segments at a modest fee. The catalogues raisonns database has always been free. The provenance guide is a primer on how to do provenance research, particularly important in this era when museums and the art collecting public are held to a high ethical standard regarding the acquisition and exhibiting of art works.
$55,025 spent$10,302 earned by the program26% of program spending
The 3 programs described on its FY2025 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $215,182.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2023 to 2024, from $1.9M to $854k (−56%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2017 5% · 2018 5% · 2020 13% · 2021 7% · 2022 3%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 4 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Lindsey Schneider
Executive director
Board chair
Jennifer Schipf
Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 16 funders to 30 funders, grant income rose $155k → $639k.
2 of 50 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 6% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 50 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 21% of grant income, and it takes 4 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 4 funders to its left
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 32% · 2018 23% · 2019 28% · 2020 23% · 2021 53% · 2022 17% · 2023 40% — growing more concentrated.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
65% of INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 68% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
76% of INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC's grant income comes from New York funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $180k arriving through sponsors registered in 2 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Government funding INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $180k on record.
- National Endowment for the Arts$180k
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In New York
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
43% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
67%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC?
- INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC (New York) receives grants from 50 organizations whose IRS filings report $2,788,030 to it, the largest being ROY LICHTENSTEIN FOUNDATION ($590,000). 34 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC have?
- IRS filings report 50 organizations giving $2,788,030 in grants to INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC, 34 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC?
- ROY LICHTENSTEIN FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $590,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in New York. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds International Foundation for Art Research →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 50 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing