Cultural Patronage Quotes

When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my checkbook.

The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous.

Today's symphonic music is sponsored by the upper structures of society.

For centuries, the arts and philanthropists have worked well together: look at the Tate family and the Courtaulds. If you've been fortunate enough to have some success in business, I think it's important to put something back.

No genuinely avant-garde artist should ever be on the government dole.

Religion is always a patron of the arts, but its taste is by no means impeccable.

I have a particular interest in corporations that give themselves a cultural aura and are in other areas suspect. Philip Morris presents itself in New York as the lover of culture while it turns out that if you look behind the scenes, it is also a prime funder of Jesse Helms, someone who is very hostile to the arts.

If by day art is in the service of business, the evenings are devoted to the businessman's enjoyment of it. That is asking a lot of art, but art and the businessman make it work.

Music must be supported by the king and the princes, for the maintenance of the arts is their duty no less than the maintenance of the laws.

I think it might be nice if there was a Cosimo de' Medici around today, offering commissions to the poor, but talented artists.

The first impression and a natural one is, that the fine arts have risen or declined in proportion as patronage has been given to them or withdrawn, but it will be found that there has often been more money lavished on them in their worst periods than in their best, and that the highest honours have frequently been bestowed on artists whose names are scarcely now known.