Great art in the USA

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A learner's guide to discovering the United States

Art collections from the origins to today

 Art collections have existed since the beginning of civilization.
    Since the times of the Pharaohs and even earlier, people with power and wealth have like to surround themselves with works of art. Collecting and commissioning art has long been a pastime of the wealthy,  a way for them -  consciously or unconsiously - of ensuring their place in history and their image for posterity. Art has also been seen for almost all time  as an investement, and even before the Classical age, works of art - particularly statues and sculpted artefacts - were traded over long distances.
    In medieval Europe, the great patron of the arts was the Catholic church, aided and seconded by kings and princes and dukes, who commissioned altarpieces and devotional art for their churches and chapels - a certain part of which can still be seen to this day, some of it in the USA.  From the Renaissance to the early 19th century, aristocratic patrons of the arts were joined by wealthy merchants who sought out commissioned, and sometimes just stole art to decorate their mansions. It is their collections that today help fill the great art galleries of Euope in particular, but also those of other countries.
    The Industrial Revolution, which started in the 18th century, created some colossal fortunes, particularly in 19th century America. The "robber barons" (a title given to some of the richest men of the Gilded Age in US history - including Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller), along with other captains of industry,  bought up fabulous collections of art from around the world - including whole buildings - which they shipped back to the USA. Their acquisitions, along with works of art bought by later millionaires and philanthropists, now make up a major part of today's great public and private art collections in the USA.
    However American collectors and patrons of the arts did not just look to the past. Like earlier patrons, they sought out contemporary artists, sponsoring new work, new ideas, new art forms.. It was American collectors who helped pull French Impressionist art out of obscurity and into the international limelight where it has remained to this day – which explains why many of the world's biggest collections of French  Impressionist art are in the USA.
    In the twenty-first century, "art" is a business like no other, and also the beneficiary of plenty of private investment. Wealthy individuals, corporations and benefactors continue to subsidize spending on the arts, and the creation of new galleries, new wings and new collections. Nowhere in the Western world is this more the case than in the United States.