Business and Art.

The business of America may be business, as a U.S. president once remarked, but during the 1960s the business of America, both in the private and public sectors, became increasingly involved with art.

Philanthropy.

One exhibition shows this trend: backed by $500,000 to purchase art, Chase Manhattan Bank showed its collection at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York in 1960. Similarly, in 1962 S. C. Johnson and Son (of Johnson Wax) paid $750,000 for 102 works by contemporary American painters, including Andrew Wyeth and Willem de Kooning. The works were shown for a month at the Milwaukee Art Center then sent on tour abroad. In 1963 the New York Metropolitan Opera received $135,000 from American Export and Isbrandtsen Lines to stage a new production of Giuseppi Verdi's opera Aida.

No Help from the Government.

Grant organizations such as the Ford Foundation were already...