General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: You can blame gun owners or blame the mentally ill... [View all]CTyankee
(68,156 posts)sponsored a LOT of the best art and architecture. The workers gladly participated in their guilds funding of some of the most wonderful projects ever done there. It was major part of their idea of a Republic. The same held in Siena. Both centers of major art in the 15the century were avidly supported by the workers.
Plenty of people who were/are not rich in our country are art lovers, hence free admission to places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Old man Morgan was a rich industrialist and a bastard when it came to his workers, but he aimed to democratize interest in the art, hence his efforts over changing our import duty laws to allow people like himself to buy and bring over art from Europe to put in his museum.
Interestingly, your examples, particularly ashcan school, of art arose from middle and lower class concerned artists. See George Bellows and his works circa 1900 of NYC tenements...