As the guilded age came to a close in the 1900s, railroad barons, industrialists and banking kingpins put money into the arts in order to launder their image and legacies. We see no such thing today. Why is that?
I’m an independent film producer in NYC who has previously acted in Hollywood studio films and sold screenplays. I’m also extremely online. I have found that wealthy techies, in general, have little to zero interest in investing in culture. This has been a source of frustration considering the large percentage of new money that comes from the sector.
I’m not alone in feeling this way: I have a friend who raises money for a non-profit theater in Boston, another who owns an art gallery in Manhattan, and another who recently retired at the LA Opera. All have said not to bother with anyone in tech. This has always bummed me out given that I genuinely believed with all of my heart and soul that the internet was going to usher in a new golden age of art, culture, and entertainment. (Yes, I was naive as a kid in the 00s.)
Art and culture can truly only thrive on patronage, especially in times of deep income inequality. Yet there are no Medicis in 2023. So what’s missing here? Where is the disconnect?
This is a great discussion, with a lot of good responses.
Without being an authority on the subject, my impression is that people who become wealthy tend to want to create something that will live on after their death that they’ll be remembered for. What that thing is is likely influenced by societal opinions of the time and the individual person’s interests and passions.
Art has long been one of the things that lives on after someone has died, but with the industrial revolution in the 1800s, industry and automation became another avenue for people to make a lasting legacy. Combine that with the tendency for people who are successful in current technology endeavors to be less adept or interested at personal expression, it’s not surprising that they would lean towards more practical legacies.
It’s not 100% though. Bill Gates, for instance, donates a lot to the arts, even though his pet projects are things like eradicating malaria.
Bill Gates is mostly doing that to hide away his legacy of being a horrible human that strived to crush open source though