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.
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 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.
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 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.
As someone who’s in the tech space I would say I’m very influenced by materialism. Arts don’t do much. Not that I don’t enjoy operas or paintings, but it’s not something would make feel like there is a new world as technology would.
Technology these days tends all to have the same flavour, because the tech bros behind it tend unreflectively to share the same kind of outlook on the world. Sometimes engineers can be overly confident that they are dealing with the most important things, but the unexamined outlooks and philosophies by which they live end up shaping our world through the technologies they implement.
As someone working in tech who studied arts and continues to be active in the arts, the experiences in life that have transformed how I perceive and understand the world have never come from technology, but often from arts. Arts can change your perceptions, can open you up to ways of perceiving that you didn’t know were there, and can reveal that your assumptions about the world were just assumptions.
That’s not to say that technology can’t be innovative and world-changing. A number of technologies around today have the potential to transform society, but the ways in which they can transform it will be dictated not just by the technologies but by the people who realize them. I don’t think it has always been the case that technologists are uninterested in the arts, but I suspect it’s no coincidence that today’s crop of tech leaders are both uninterested in the arts and conspicuously blinkered in their vision.
A lot of what you mention is pretty accurate. Take the internet and websites. I made a website a year ago for my portfolio.
It doesn’t have a landing page, its purposely difficult to navigate and I used zero seo when designing it. I showed it to the CTO at the company I worked at and he thought it was great, but every other person at the company was saying the website is shit, I dont know how to use it.
Its literally just a menu, which has clickable menu links at the bottom in case you’re really that dim. But because it involves hunting and clicking instead of just scrolling downwards mindlessly its “wrong.” These same people see nothing wrong with ad copy laden seo articles.
I haven’t changed my website and instead moved from working in tech to working in the arts full time now. I’m sorry, but IT people mostly fucking suck and they’re just never going to appreciate anything that doesn’t fit their parameters of tolerance.
As a hard materialist, I don’t see art as separate from materialism. What art does is materially express immaterial things - a good piece of art isn’t just an image or description of events, it’s an idea or concept that has been made into a material form.
Art isn’t just a description of the world. The point of art is to change it.
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?
I’m not a rich techie, but I guess my view is that I am in STEM. It’s what I understand, and what I value. STEM is produces things of usefulness and monetary value. STEM is facts and numbers.
Where art is based around feelings. I don’t understand that, and I don’t value that. I do value industrial design, like the work of Henry Dreyfus. His streamlined New York Central Hudsons, the Eversharp Skyline, and the round Honeywell thermostat are excellent examples of attractive and useful things. So is Ikea furniture. That’s my art. The Junghans Max Bill is another great example of great industrial design.
Again, I’m not a rich techie. Just a mechanical engineer. But there may be some crossover, who knows.
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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.
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.
Because they will continue exist throughout even without investment. And for the price is not valuable to drop more money. You know what’s valuable for poor people? Money and that’s what STEM brings. Why the fuck would I pay tens of thousands of dollars to set someone up to get in line for unemployment or other form of financial assistance?
A big chunk of techies are furries. And oh boy do they commission a lot of art.
