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Private money/public good 

How patronage helped form communications

By Karen Herland

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The name Rockefeller conjures images of excessive wealth and luxury. After all, Oysters Rockefeller was named to link the richest living American with the over-the-top richness of the sauce.

It seems almost counter-intuitive to consider the Rockefellers in light of their decades-long support for communications, the arts, the humanities, medicine, agriculture and ultimately, public education and the public good.

The impact private wealth had on the development of public art is the theme of Patronizing the Public: American Philanthropy’s Transformation of Culture, Communication, and the Humanities, edited by communication studies professor William Buxton. The collection of work by a number of scholars examines the role of philanthropy in shaping media and the performing arts.

“I wanted this volume to act as a point of reference for people working in this field,” explained Buxton. He added that the influence of philanthropy on communications has not been extensively explored before now.

The essays address the impact of philanthropy on television, cinema, dance, museums, journalism, film-music, radio, and the humanities in general. The essays were originally presented as papers in a workshop Buxton organized while he was scholar-in-residence at the Rockefeller Archive Center during the summer of 2004.

“I wanted to combine experienced researchers with emerging scholars,” said Buxton. Among those invited were Concordia professors Haidee Wasson (cinema) and Charles Acland (communication studies).

Each contributor provided detailed reflection on his/her own field’s relationship to private philanthropy. Buxton contributed a handful of chapters intended to link and contextualize the more focused contributions.

Ultimately it’s the complex interconnection between private funding and public interest that is at the heart of the book, as reflected in its title. For instance, his chapter on the ‘Rockefeller half-century’ (the 20s to the 70s, the period covered by the volume) uses the construction of the Rockefeller Center and the Lincoln Center in New York City to trace the evolution of public and private philanthropic efforts. Both projects involved Rockefellers in their planning and execution. The former was a commercial venture, directed centrally and involving many communications industries as tenants. The latter was a decentralized, non-profit endeavour that was nonetheless heavily underwritten by private interests.

“I also wanted to challenge an instrumental vision of funding that looks solely at results,” said Buxton. “These essays deal with the complexity of relationships between donors and recipients.”

The Rockefellers’ influence during this period was far-reaching, extending into Canada with the establishment of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and nearly $20 million in grants, fellowships and support for artists and artistic associations. The chapter contributed by Queen’s University’s Jeffrey Brison traces the origins of the federally-sponsored SSHRC and Canada Council to precursors funded by private foundations including the Rockefellers’ and the Carnegie’s.

Each of the chapters is based on primary archival research (which meant a lot of fact-checking). Buxton proposed the project to the editor of Lexington Books’ critical media studies series and it was well-received. It has already generated positive interest from libraries and foundation officials.