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?
Too many universities have transformed what used to be broad liberal arts programs with technical majors into narrow vocational programs. The focus now is on training to get a job and make lots of money. Interest in anything outside of that is discouraged in all kinds of ways.
I think some of this is the result of conservative attempts to eliminate critical thinking skills from the educational system. More of it is a side-effect of the more limited opportunities offered by our late-stage capitalist economy.
I have a computer science degree, but I studied anthropolgy, literature, and history as well. It pains me to see all of that devalued and ignored.
I think you’re on to something.
I studied in a university which also had a famous art department. I tried taking courses on the art programme’s aide, but they didn’t take me - all courses required the 10 month basic arts studies to participate.
I think some mingling would benefit both the artists and the techies. Steve Jobs famously studied calligraphy, and later made apple the mainstay of digital art, so it can be profitable too.
This is my personal experience. Feel free to skip it.
I was lucky in a number of ways. I started college about two years before the first computer boom hit, but I was already an experienced (if self-trained) programmer. Instead of spacing the programming courses out over four years I took them all in two semesters. That left me with a lot of elective hours to fill.
I had been an avid reader since kindergarten, with major interests in science fiction and fantasy. That lead me to take courses in history and medieval literature. Those lead me to anthropology, which was a world-changing experience for me.
The professors I studied under, outside of my major, were generally pleased, if a little puzzled, to have a technical geek in their classes. To everyone’s surprise, I turned out to be a very good student in those areas. After the first few classes I was encouraged to take graduate level seminars, which I really enjoyed. I was still treated as a bit of an oddity, but I got a lot of support.
By the time I graduated with a B.A. in Computer Science, I had also earned minors in Anthropology, English, and Medieval Studies. If I could have stayed for another semester I would have had Anthropology as major and added History as a minor.
That was one of the best times of my life. And it certainly expanded my perception of the world. In retrospect, my Computer Science classes were probably the least important thing I did in college. Studying multiple disciplines forced me to understand different ways of thinking and different sets of values. That has served me very well in the years since, both professionally and personally. I am also happier because of it.
I wish everyone had the opportunities I did. I think we short-change students by feeding them bulk information and telling them that is what an education should be. The most important thing anyone can get from an education is the ability to continue to learn.
Art hadn’t been properly commodified yet because the technology for mass produced art didn’t exist. They still needed artisans and artists, so they had to fund the arts if they wanted to see any created. They didn’t appreciate art more, per se, but they saw it as fundamentally different from other widgets.
This is no longer the case. With the advent of photography, film, digital information, and of course the internet we now see profitable “art” without any need to fund it with philanthropy. Aside from one-off public works projects they can fund by stealing public funds, they can only imagine art through the lens of profitability and have no understanding of the amount of free time and energy that has gone into creating so much of the art that exists today.
There is no Medicis in 2023. Instead you get Marvel.
Now I want a marvel/Medici crossover!
Bang on.
Whenever I see people ask whether “AI will replace artists” I am forced to confront the fact that to the tech set everything is just a product and the only value is what you can get for it when you sell it.
In the 1900s, culture was considered a common good. In 2023, all culture is to be torn down to build utopia. Rich folks who want to build a legacy end up sticking their fingers into politics and science instead of art and culture. They’d rather pay for a mob to tear down a statue than to pay an artist to create one.
That being said, the Internet did usher in a new golden age of art, culture, and entertainment. It’s just that it came from the bottom up rather than from the top down. There’s an unlimited amount of cool stuff being created every day, but smaller scale projects funded by regular people.
Because arts don’t indoctrinate the youth with messages business moguls like and control, education does.
It’s funny you mention that, because there is one new patron in tech who is making waves in NYC: Peter Thiel. The catch is, of course, that everything he finances goes through his ideological filter. And he’s not being particularly generous either.
Thiel has put money into a series of small zines, a youth focused film festival, a small production company, a few very popular podcasts, and a feature film that just went to Cannes. None of it has made him any money because the target audience of edgy, sexy, artsy 20 somethings have rejected the technofeudalistic dogma that these works promote.
There was certainly a brief reactionary wave where young artists in LA and NYC rebelled against liberals for Covid restrictions and “corporate wokeness”, but other than the occasional use of slurs, it never materialized beyond aesthetics and all but ended when Roe V Wade was overturned.
Lol I’m sorry what, this guy really spent his money on an anti woke film festival? Has he ever even been to a film festival? The whole point is wokeness. Really curious to see what Atlas Shrugged esque films he’s financed, so I can make sure I run away from all the major plot points when they happen in real life.
Yeah, I was invited by the queer Black kid who ran it. He ODd on the last night of the fest. Grim stuff. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/peter-thiel-anti-woke-film-festival-trevor-bazile
I kinda love that a techno feudalist is stingily trying to flip as counterculture of an art form as zines. Like the only currently running not explicitly anarchist zine I know is curated leatherdykery.
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
Sure sounds like you’re talking about just another set of C-levels and VCs. Not exactly what I would call “techies.”
Maybe not the answer you are looking for but I am happy that philantrophically minded tech people rather seem to prioritize vaccinating children in Africa or conserving nature.
More specifically I also think it might have to do with the fact that most techies grew up finding movies very uninteresting. So why would they put money into an stale art form that just doesn’t interest them?
Where are you getting the ‘fact’ that most technies find movies uninteresting? Seems completely out of left field
They might be into certain fandoms (Star Trek etc.), but it is very clear to me that compared to the rest of the population tech minded people spend significantly less time watching movies or TV shows (especially if you count Anime as a different art form). Ask a typical techie if they even own a TV and they will probably say no.
Most people don’t really respect the patron model of arts funding anymore. The more prominent view is: if you can’t make money as an artist, you’ve failed and should quit. The market is seen as the ultimate arbiter of value. Why mess with it?
I think it’s something like that.
As a techie (although not a rich one), the idea of sponsoring the arts has not crossed my mind ever before reading this. After a minute of thinking, here’s my thought why:
- Techies value different things.
Back in the day, those rich and powerful valued social standing. Money was merely just a (very powerful) signifier of this. Art was a proxy for both money and standing: it showed you had resource enough to spend on frivolity, and also implied you were erudite enough to appreciate it. This is still true today: walk into a traditional rich man’s house, or a place designed to appeal to the wealthy (such as expensive restaurants or professional investment offices), and you will see art on the walls.
Techies, however, are different. Many of them view their wealth and power as achievements despite their social standing, not because of it. Many techies (due to their interest in tech from an early age) were close to social outcasts when they were younger, and as a result they still don’t value social status.
Techies (again, due to their instrinsic interest in tech) tend to value coolness, sci-fi futurism, and impact factor more than anything else. This is why you see the headlines on the latest billionaire investing ridiculous sums of money into impractical tech projects (Elon Musk is a great example of this); they do it mostly because it’s cool techwise and because they think it would make for a really cool future. (Self-driving cars all over the roads? Fully automated drone deliveries directly to your home? Space tourism? VR that is indistinguishable from reality?)
And techies don’t just not value social standing, they almost dislike it (due to being social outcasts again). “Hobo chic” is a perfect example of this: Silicon Valley offices pride themselves on letting their employees wear whatever they want, disliking traditional signifiers of social standing; and when the CEO meets wealthy traditionalist old-money types wearing suits and acting formal, he will wear shorts and a T-shirt (“look at you, stuck in the social maze, having to wear suits and act politely to climb the ranks; now look at me, I am above all of that, for I have intrinsic technical value that you do not.”)
Art, another traditional signifier of social status, is also not valued for the same reason, unfortunately. I don’t think you can change that without a significant cultural shift to the Valley and what it stands for.
I like that this question is generating resoonses.
My opinion, as a “techie” (although not even close to rich one) with a lot of aritists among friens, is that the resson is the same as to why artists don’t contribute to open source software.
We don’t have the knowledge to understand it, and my feeling is that most art is created for other artists. Whenever I go to some new exhibition, it is utterly borring if none of my educated artist friends are not with me to explain me why is something interesting and how. Also, why something else is utterly shit.
Artist world is not doing nearly enough to educate non artists and help us understand what is being created.
Also, looks like you don’t count games, music, movies and who knows what else as art.
If we are counting video games as art, then there have been plenty of rich techies over the past 2 decades who have spent millions out of pocket trying to create their own version of “The Next World of Warcraft Plus Call of Duty Except Better”.
We don’t usually hear about video games funded and created by rich tech people though, because their game projects rarely make it to launch (due to the fact that video game development is actually much more challenging than it looks).
As any other art. Not every painting is good art, not every paining deserves admiring.
Mozart was just good entertainer for the rich people, but we consider him great artist now (as we should), I don’t see difference with games.
Problem is that some artists would like to be paid to make stuff only they (and their small community) likes.
While I agree that kind of art should exist, and we should have society in which it is possible… I do think it can not be a rule.
I have stuff I like to do and think those are more important for society than my actual work, but I know no one want to pay for it.
Americans especially are trained from a young age to distrust anything that can’t be capitalized upon or used to generate profit. They can understand video games or TV shows, but don’t have the background in arts or literature to understand where the character designs or plot devices came from. Students looking to enter university are almost universally discouraged from entering the arts because it (probably) won’t make them any money as compared to a doctor or lawyer, and the social safety net and arts funding are so underpowered that it’s hard to blame anyone for taking a safer path.
Even with scientific research, something much more familiar to techies, there’s a distrust or disdain in the general public around research that isn’t immediately applicable to profit. Why do astronomy at all when you could be doing cancer research? Why do pure maths when you could be an engineer?
Honestly I think it’s just a natural result of living in a hypercapitalist society ruled by a caste of billionaires who are able to influence government policy more and more every year. They can’t profit from art or culture (except to use it as a money laundering device), so why should it exist at all? Better that we all are forced to work for them in order to pay our bills and get health insurance for our families. I think a lot of us have internalized this and feel like there’s no alternative. I hope there’s a backlash.
funny thing is the tech we enjoy today is the result of bluesky research that didn’t seem profitable at the time.
A big chunk of techies are furries. And oh boy do they commission a lot of art.
They feel like it’s not “needed” Only in the absence of art will they understand.
Something I kept hearing when I was younger is that STEM = money and getting a degree or pursuing a career in something that doesn’t make money is a waste of time. This idea gave a lot of people a high and mighty attitude that if you arent working in tech you’re wasting your life. “Get fit and learn to code” became the go-to life advice when I was in my 20s. People that don’t understand art (not as in getting a message out of it, but understanding why people enjoy creative works) telling each other and anyone that will listen that if something isn’t a money making engine theres no reason to do it
I have been around some of the tech elite you’re referring to, and I propose that the disconnect arises because Silicon Valley uniquely revolves around Scale (how many people you can reach) and Impact (how big a dent you can leave in the universe). It’s impossible to overstate how ingrained it is in the culture, and it is very explicit when you talk to folks at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for example: the ability to measure and prove the impact of your project is as important as the project itself.
I admit to being a member of this culture, if not wealthy.
To me, the types of art you mention - art galleries and live theater being good examples - are extremely limited in serving relatively small populations concentrated in city centers where there already is a lot of culture. The generation that created the Internet is, for better or worse, much more interested in bigger investments that can reach everyone on the planet and hopefully improve lives in some measurable and long lasting way.
I’m sure the wealthy here in California contribute to the local arts community just like anywhere else. But there is no equivalent in the arts to curing polio worldwide or giving every child access to the Internet, so I don’t personally disagree with prioritizing these agendas in a coordinated way.
