Your lack of art appreciation has brought shame to the land. Redeem yourself with this one weird sponsorship trick.

The issue:

The fine arts constantly struggle for funding, perhaps due to their general inability to compete with modern sources of entertainment.

Proposal:

In art museums, commercial sponsorship could take the form of (non-destructive) modification to the works of art themselves. For example, the Mona Lisa could be holding an iPhone (an idea which has been done before: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=mona+lisa+iphone), or one could spot a Radio Shack in the nightmarish hellscape of Hieronymus Bosch’s Hell (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Mad_meg.jpg).

For flat artwork, sponsorship images could easily be added by using a glass overlay with the desired promotional material painted on. See below for details:

Fig 1: A clear overlay (perhaps a piece of glass, or an animation cel) would be slid over the piece of artwork in question. In this example, “The Scream” is modified to be chomping on a delicious hamburger. Perhaps this particular overlay would be a McDonalds ad, which might encourage Burger King to buy a competing overlay for another famous painting at the same museum.

Fig 2: Side view of the above image: A is the clear overlay, B is the painting.

Conclusion:

This is a great idea and you (assuming you are a museum director or curator) should apply it right away!

PROS: Saves fine art from destruction, brings more visitors to art museums.

CONS: Could make regular non-sponsored museums seem boring in comparison.