Nearly €1bn raised for Notre-Dame over two days Several charitable and crowdfunding campaigns have launched since the fire

An image made available by Gigarama.ru on Wednesday April 17, 2019 shows an aerial shot of the fire damage to Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on Tuesday April 16. Nearly $1 billion has already poured in from ordinary worshippers and high-powered magnates around the world to restore Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after it was damaged in a massive fire on Monday. (Gigarama.ru via AP)

HELEN STOILAS

18th April 2019 03:49 BST

An aerial shot shows the fire damage to Notre Dame cathedral in Paris Gigarama.ru via AP
Private donors and crowdfunding campaigns, many of them in the US, have joined the efforts of France’s richest families to rebuild Notre Dame cathedral after a fire ravaged the building. Nearly €1bn is estimated to have been raised for the restoration so far.

The billionaire investor and former Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) trustee Henry Kravis, and his wife Marie-Josée Kravis, MoMA’s president emerita, donated $10m, to the reconstruction, according to statement released by Kravis’s firm KKR. The New York art dealer Larry Gagosian meanwhile announced on Tuesday that he would be organising a benefit exhibition at his Paris gallery. “In the spirit of the gallery’s ongoing commitment to artists and the arts, all proceeds will be directed to supporting the renovation and restoration of the medieval cathedral, an icon for the city and its people, France, and the world,” Gagosian said in a statement. The Brazilian philanthropist Lily Safra, the widow of the banker Edmond Safra, has pledged €20m to the cathedral. The generous donation has met with some backlash in Brazil, however, since Rio de Janeiro’s gutted National Museum did not draw the same level of support from the country’s wealthy.