>While the rich were always the major patrons, their own cultural
>preferrences changed into investiment strategies and auction house
>value estimates.
And Kelley was right about the increase in corporate influence. Total corporate contributions to the arts in the U.S. were 90 million in 1975. 11 years later (1986) they were 536 million. (cited in Privatising Culture" Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s by Chin-tao Wu)
In the same book there's this from a Chase Manhattan Bank ad in Forbes from October '86:
With the Government giving less to art and education, somebody's got to give more. And that somebody is America's corporations.