In a climate where the richest collectors – Charles Saatchi, Roman Abramovich – are as celebrated as the artists they buy, we tend to forget that in the history of arts patronage, entrepreneurs-turned-connoisseurs are a young development. The world’s greatest museums – the Louvre, Hermitage, Prado – began as lavish civilisation-is-power statements by monarchs and emperors; private individuals did not emerge as significant museum patrons before the 19th century. Until a generation ago, those wanting to leave their mark in bricks and mortar usually did so in a room of their own – albeit a very grand one – in a state museum: the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Gallery at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing. But in the past 15 years, that has changed: worldwide, collectors seek immortality in glass and steel, through a museum of their own, designed by an architect of their choosing.

These are not latter-day Henry Tates or Pavel Tretyakovs. Although they gave their names to museums, Tate and Moscow’s Tretyakov were democratic visionaries who paid for buildings and donated core collections to kick-start evolving national, state-run institutions. Museum builders of the 1990s and 2000s, by contrast, are products of late capitalism, dedicated to more personal projects, with an individualistic flavour. They represent the legacy of Thatcher-Reagan mantras of choice, private philanthropy, me-generation celebrity.