Privatising Culture

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but flawed
Review: This is an interesting study, as far as it goes. Certainly, there is a lot of good information about which corporations are funding art, where they fund it, and how. If you want to know which corporations fund art, how much they fund, where they do so, this is the book for you. The book contains lots of specifics, tables, statistics, examples of exhibits and color plates of many individual art works.

The problem is that the book assumes that corporate and other private funding of art is a new phenomenon, and assumes this is by definition a bad thing. But is it? Considered in the context of the history of Western art, and even, one might add, arts in Asia and in various empires of eras gone by, wealthy benefactors have been a mainstay of the literary and fine arts, to speak somewhat hyperbolically, almost from the moment arts were invented.

Shakespeare was privately funded. So was Rembrandt. So were the Dutch masters. So was Michelangelo. So were most other Renaissance artists, in fact. Remember the Medicis? To pretend, therefore, that "neo-conservatives" are a sudden, new and unwelcome scourge of the art market is ridiculous, and taken entirely out of the context of art history.

Naturally, there have also always been conflicts of interest. Someone who funds something will want to have some control, after all. That is human nature. But like the conflicts this book points out, the arts of bygone eras also reflect such conflicts, and we nevertheless think them masterful.

By their very nature, the royalty, peers, merchants--and all other wealthy benefactors of literary and fine arts through the ages--were conservatives, too. The arts, come what may, have always survived, as they will no doubt continue to do in the future. To do that, they need benefactors. And in all ages, the arts have turned to those with the most money, for support. Such are the facts of life.

--Alyssa A. Lappen