In terms of the emerging artists program, that need to support young artists was established in 1999, due to quite a bit of research in the field.
Given your story, though, I think there are a lot of similarities to what an emerging artist's experience is today. I have counterparts at many of the other financial institutions, as well, who are actively collecting. More and more, I'm seeing other corporate sponsors understanding, from a collection perspective, what it means to collect work to make sure that artists are paid, to support them directly.