The Groove 248 - Can Art Exist Without Capitalism?
Welcome to the 248th issue of The Groove.
I am Maria Brito, an art advisor, curator, and author based in New York City.
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CAN ART EXIST WITHOUT CAPITALISM?
One of the most important, comprehensive, and beautiful museums in the world, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has been largely funded privately since its opening in 1872. In 2024, 94% of operating revenue and 100% of acquisitions came from private money.
Artists made art long before crypto, stock exchanges and hedge funds, and they’ll make art after. Cave walls, cathedrals, court workshops… human beings will turn materials into meaning under any system. The question isn’t “Can art exist without capitalism?” It’s “Can the art world we know, the one of global galleries, museums, biennials, fairs, six-figure production budgets, exist without a market that moves capital quickly?” That’s a different animal.
The uncomfortable truth is that the art world always runs on a patron of some kind: church, throne, state, or market.
Each patron buys a different kind of freedom and imposes different pressures. Artists often say they reject money, then ask for production budgets, studio stipends, handlers, shippers, catalogs, and museum-caliber installs. Those things are expensive.
Before the Market: Churches, Thrones, and Juries
For centuries, art was funded by religion and royalty. Rome perfected the model. Sixtus IV rebuilt the chapel that now bears his name; Julius II hired Michelangelo to vault the ceiling with Genesis (1508–1512), while Raphael frescoed the papal apartments across the hall. The Vatican as total artwork and total message is arguably the OG immersive experience.
Meanwhile in Florence, the Medici turned banking into rule and patronage into infrastructure: Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Donatello, and of course Michelangelo all benefited from their money and protection.
In France, Francis I effectively nationalized taste: bringing Leonardo to Amboise and seeding the Fontainebleau style. Courts didn’t just buy pictures; they financed studios, workshops, architects, weavers, and foundries, basically the whole supply chain of culture.
In Spain, Philip II and Philip IV commissioned Titian and installed Velázquez at court. In England, Charles I assembled a pan-European collection with van Dyck as the face of royal style.
Those royal and aristocratic holdings later became the backbone of public museums after revolutions and reforms: the Louvre from the French royal collections, the Prado from the Spanish crown, the Uffizi from Medici legacy, the Hermitage from Catherine the Great’s acquisitions.
Long before capitalism, art thrived under sovereign patronage: magnificent, well funded, and tightly tasked. The trade-off was clear: extraordinary scale and stability at the price of iconography and flattery.
The Dealer and Collector Revolution: Capital Buys Autonomy
Modern artistic freedom arrived with a new patron: the gallery. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dealers like Durand-Ruel (Impressionists), Vollard (Cézanne), and Kahnweiler (Picasso, Braque) advanced money, absorbed risk, staged exhibitions, and built collector bases. Capital, oddly, expanded freedom.
In our own era, philanthropists often underwrite cultural capital. One of the best recent examples is Leonard A. Lauder, who died in June 2025. His Cubist collection - 78 masterworks by Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Gris - was pledged to the Met and widely valued at over $1 billion. He also gave the Whitney its largest gift at the time ($131 million) and served as its longtime chairman, shaping the museum’s capacity to do ambitious shows.
Today, mega-galleries have effectively become centers that fund ambitious projects, publish catalogs, and even pay studio stipends. The result: speed, diversity, and a marketplace that can sustain wildly different visions at once.
Could the Art World Exist Without Capitalism?
Art absolutely would. Artists will make work under any circumstances.
But the art world as we experience it now: its scale, pluralism, and pace, depends on a market that functions as patron: underwriting production, distributing risk, and rewarding vision quickly enough to keep experimentation alive. If you removed capitalism tomorrow, you’d need a massive, stable, public-funding architecture to replace it. It would shrink the art world to a tenth of what it is today and centralize power in the hands of the government. You would trade market distortions (hype, inequality, speculation) for state distortions (bureaucracy, conformity, politics). Pick your patron; pick your pressure.
And here’s the blunt point: many artists say they dislike money, but they want sold-out shows, museum exhibitions, and six-or-seven-figure prices. Who pays for that? The galleries with robust wallets, the collectors with conviction, and the philanthropists who write the checks, they all exist because capital circulates. I’m pro-capitalism and pro-free markets because, as much as it is an imperfect system, it’s the patron that keeps the lights on, the crates moving, and the ideas running wild.