Biography
This Foundation was set up in 1990 as an act of generosity of Rick Hopkins (d.2000) and his wife Adel Rootstein (d.1992). They had made a successful business designing props for theatre and retail outlets, and later mannequins. The business was sold for a considerable sum which liberated Adel Rootstein to do many things that she had always wanted to do, such as enrol at the Slade School of Fine Art. Before her premature death she began to sort out her financial affairs with the aim of setting up a foundation to assist young artists/designers, especially in their formative years.In 2001 the Trustees made a gift of £500,000 to the British Museum to form a Trust Fund, the income from which is to be used to buy works on paper by living artists, or who have died within the past ten years, who have been resident in the United Kingdom and participated in its artistic life. The capital is protected and has to rise in line with inflation; the BM is permitted to use the surplus arising from investment activity. The sum available therefore varies each year. In 2016 the Foundation allowed the capital sum to be spent down over the course of the next ten years.
