Culture, Inc.

It was hardly the sort of setting or audience usually associated with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. While the orchestra sat in the center of a large gymnasium, the listeners squatted or sprawled on the bare floor. Occasionally they waved their hands in imitation of the conductor, sang along with the music or uninhibitedly ran their fingers across the strings of a cello. They were young children, attending last week's Tiny Tot Concert, an annual series sponsored by Rich's department store in Atlanta. Rich's does not expect the children to be customers for quite a while, but it believes in mixing business and culture.

So do more and more U.S. companies. Businessmen, from the Medicis to the Morgans, have often been eager patrons of the arts. In recent years the big foundations--usually set up with fortunes earned in business--have been the most generous and experimental in supporting culture. But corporations are beginning to catch up on both counts. Last year U.S. business spent more than $25 million in support of art, literature and music, and this year it is expected to spend 10% more.

Spreading Out. Corporations tend to sponsor home-town culture, such as a symphony or art museum, partly because this attracts the more intelligent employees they are searching for; across the U.S., no fewer than 70 cultural centers are under way or planned, most of them heavily supported by businessmen. But corporations are beginning to spread out into broader areas, taking a more active part in the world of culture. Corning Glass invites philosophers and writers to periodic conferences, one of which will be held in May to discuss the problems of Africa. Ford Motor, whose $6,500,000 company-contributions chest is entirely apart from the Ford Foundation, helps support 17 symphony orchestras and has just doled out $370,000 to restore the sagging Washington and Lee University chapel; the company felt that Robert E. Lee's tomb deserved better surroundings.

Hunt Foods recently gave a public library to Fullerton, Calif., where its cannery is located, and the Chase Manhattan Bank is helping to restore Wall Street's Federal Hall and a colonial town on Staten Island. President Bart Lytton of Lytton Savings & Loan Assoc. has commissioned a $60,000 work by Sculptor Henry Moore for Los Angeles' Art Museum Plaza.

Humble Thanks. Corporate patronage frequently reflects cultural tastes in the executive suite. Family-owned Johnson's Wax is sponsoring a world tour of a 102-painting exhibition called "Art: U.S.A., Now," because of the family's interest in modern art. Atlanta's Arthur Harris, vice president of the Mead Corp., started a combined contest and traveling exhibition of paintings that has become an important art event in the Southeast. Many banks decorate their lobbies and executive offices with art (Oregon's U.S. National Bank even hangs oils in its ladies' lounges). But New York's Manhattan Savings Bank goes them one better: it provides the public with noonday piano recitals and evening operas on its banking floors. At the urging of Opera Buff John M. Will, president of American Export Lines, the shipping firm last fall financed $135,000 worth of sets and costumes for a new Metropolitan Opera production of A'ida.

Besides improving corporate image and good will, culture contributions sometimes stimulate business. After Basic-Witz Furniture of Waynesboro, Va., commissioned a concerto by Composer Robert Evett to mark its 75th anniversary, orders spurted. Sponsoring the BBC Age of Kings Shakespearean series on U.S. educational TV, Humble Oil got only a brief mention on the programs, but nonetheless received 75,000 letters from pleased listeners--including scores of requests for gasoline credit cards. When the Kitchens of Sara Lee covered costs of a "Save Carnegie Hall" concert, grateful letters poured in presumably from a lot of people who like cake as well as culture.

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