The Met Gala has come and gone, and as much as I would love to talk about fashion, art, history, and how important it is to preserve all three, we’re watching in real time what happens when lessons aren’t learned from this trio.
The Met Gala began in 1948, and in 2025, high-profile fashion houses bought tables (which cost $100,000 per person), raising $31 million from a mixture of donors who are household names, including those from the fashion houses that also donate. Not to mention exhibition sponsors. This year, the Met Gala beat last year’s fundings, bringing in $42 million dollars.
Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, were the top donors this year. Donating 10 million dollars and a table seated for 10. The flashy show of who’s who and the global attention that comes with the Met Gala is not enough to distract the masses from what’s happening in our lives in real time.
The Defunding Of Liberal Arts
The liberal arts and humanities have been cut to the point of concern in colleges and universities across the United States. Programs have been eliminated completely, faculty have been reduced, and entire departments. Doing so created ill-informed citizens, and even business leadership (since liberal arts teaches ethics and humanities).
Art, history, and fashion, believe it or not, keep us up to par with our international peers. Giving us basic knowledge about the world helps us to understand the present day and how our current politics mirrors historical mistakes of the past.
No liberal arts is a vote for anti-intellectualism. If donors of the Met Gala believe in the arts so much, is it impossible for these amounts (and the incredible tax breaks that come with them for the already less than taxed class) to go towards these programs that can help the artists of the future?
If there is no outcry for the defunding of arts (especially when some of that defunding includes liberal arts programs housed in the same city the Met Gala is held in), the public can’t believe that the Met Gala, its attendees, or its sponsors are truly patrons of the arts.
Tech Bros Buying Culture Doesn’t Hide Dystopia &Totalitarianism
For the past three years, we’ve watched the most documented genocide of our lifetimes. Classes in the liberal arts will teach you that Israel’s war on Gaza didn’t start in 2023, and encourage us to question why we should turn a blind eye to how the Met’s biggest sponsor this year also assists in war crimes.
The Israeli military publicly admitted to using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enhance its capabilities during its war on Gaza, along with Google and Microsoft cloud services. Of these three companies, Amazon reportedly has the closest relationship with the Israeli military. Israeli military intelligence uses AWS servers to store masses of intelligence information on almost everyone in Gaza.
On the domestic front, the pay for Amazon workers and the conditions they work in make the already thin veil of alleged patronage to the arts almost translucent. Activist group “Everybody Hates Elon” has accused Amazon of unsafe workplace conditions and projected a video criticizing Bezos and Amazon onto the billionaire’s Madison Square Park penthouse the night before the Met.
The video featured a tearful 75-year-old Amazon worker, Mary Hill. She called for the Met Gala recognition to go to the people who keep Amazon running, not to the rich founder who has spent millions on union busting, and pays lower than today’s rising prices can keep up with. The same Amazon where just last month, a worker in an Oregon warehouse died while on the job, and the other workers were told to keep working while the lifeless body lay on the floor.
The dominating class and political party show us every day that listening to everyday citizens and ensuring their voices are heard is simply not on their to-do list. With rights being stripped away, and unpopular wars that have somehow skirted past the approval of Congress (despite what the US Constitution says) and have made centuries-old global allies turn their heads, it’s we the people who pay the price with our lives. While the wealthy try to convince us that their donations to the Met are worth the same.
