Can the National Endowment for the Arts Survive?

European Journal of Political Economy, 2020

We analyze the art market in Paris between the government-controlled Salon and the post-1880 system, when the Republican government liberalized art exhibitions. The jury of the old Salon decided on submissions with a bias in favor of conservative art of the academic insiders, erecting entry barriers against outsiders as the Impressionists. With a difference-in difference estimation, we provide evidence that the end of the government-controlled Salon contributed to start the price increase of the Impressionists relative to the insiders.

Journal of Cultural Economics, 1985

Issue 35: Decolonizing Art Institutions Edited by Ronald Kolb & Dorothee Richter www.on-curating.org/issue-35.html With contributions by Sabih Ahmed, Marie-Laure Allain Bonilla, Binna Choi, Eyal Danon, Claire Farago, Yolande van der Heide, Nkule Mabaso, Same Mdluli, Shaheen Merali, Ivan Muñiz-Reed, Shwetal Patel, Rohit Jain, Raqs Media Collective, Dorothee Richter, Sophie Vögele and Philippe Saner, Woon Tien Wei, Sophie J Williamson, Claire Wintle, Michelle Wong Oncurating Issue 35 compiles the outcome of the symposium at the Kunstmuseum Basel and a summer academy at the Zurich University of the Arts. The symposium “De-colonizing Art Institutions” took place at Kunstmuseum Basel, June 21 and 22, 2017, with the speakers Sabih Ahmed (Asia Art Archive), Jeebesh Bagchi (Raqs Media Collective), Binna Choi (Casco), Eyal Danon (Holon Digital Art Archive), Kadiatou Diallo (SPARCK), Same Sizakele Mdluli (Lecturer, Wits University), Rohit Jain (ISEK, Uni Zürich), Shwetal A. Patel (Kochi-Muziris Biennale), Dorothee Richter (Postgraduate Programme in Curating, ZHdK) and Søren Grammel (Kunstmuseum Basel). You will find contributions by the guests of the symposium and additional articles by scholars and practitioners connected to this topic. The symposium was accompanied by a Summer Academy in Zurich held by the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, Continuing Education, Zurich University of the Arts from 13–24 June and an exhibition with the same name at the Oncurating Project Space in Zurich. The outcome of this exhibition is published in Issue 34.

The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 2007

Public funding of art in the United States continues to be a subject of much heated debate amongst politicians, artists and the general population. The NEA has borne the brunt of criticism since it was established in the 1960s, yet it accounts for a minority of total government spending on the arts – even at the federal level. A problem, then, is that the public is seemingly uninformed about arts policy. This should come as no surprise, because, in fact, the US government does not have a single, comprehensive, official policy towards the arts. Harnessing new and old data, however, we may map trends and shortfalls in support of the arts to gain an understanding of just what is, at least, the implicit policy of the United States toward art. Conducting a survey of governmental support for the arts will allow us to begin to think of how we may improve it.

Tdr the Drama Review a Journal of Performance Studies, 2004

2012

The current debates about political art or aesthetic politics do not take the politics of art into account. How can artists address social politics when the politics of art remain opaque? Artists situated critically within the museum self-consciously acknowledge the institutional frame and their own complicity with it. Artists’ compromised role within the institution of art obscures their radically opposed values. Institutions are conservative hierarchies that aim to augment and consolidate their authority. How can works of art be liberating when the institutional conditions within which they are exhibited are exclusive, compromised and exploitive? Despite their purported neutrality, art institutions instrumentalise art politically and ideologically. Institutional mediation defines the work of art in the terms of its own ideology, controlling the legitimate discourse on value and meaning in art. In a society where everything is instrumentalised and heteronomously defined, autonomous art performs a social critique. Yet how is it possible to make autonomous works of art when they are instantly recuperated by commercial and ideological interests? At a certain point, my own art practice could no longer sustain these contradictions. This thesis researches the possibilities for a sustainable and uncompromised art practice. If art is the critical alternative to society then it must function critically and alternatively. Artistic ambition is not just a matter of aesthetic objectives or professional anxiety; it is particularly a matter of the values that artists affirm through their practice. Art can define its own terms of production and the burden of responsibility falls on artists. The Exploding Cinema Collective has survived independently for twenty years, testifying to this principle. Autonomy is a valuable tool in the critique of heteronomy, but artists must assert it. The concept of the autonomy of art must be replaced with the concept of the autonomy of the artist. KEYWORDS: art, art institution, autonomy, institution, contemporary art, critique, Exploding Cinema, institutional critique, ideology, politics, political, aesthetic, agency, museum, use-value, underground cinema.

Journal of arts management, law and society, 1986

R ecent controversies about the commissioning, installation, and maintenance of public art-especially sculpture-have raised a number of issues, but resolved few of these. In some cases, public outcry has prevented a work from being installed or has contributed to its redesign. In other cases, opposition has rapidly quieted as the once-offended public has come to accept, even to enthusiastically champion, the previously detested work. Each instance has been seen as essentially idiosyncratic, hence few commonalities have been discerned to provide guidelines for future commissions and installations, although commissioning agencies have adjusted their procedures in response to "mistakes" and controversies. This article attempts to identify and examine the major legal (state and federal), political, sociological, and aesthetic issues involved in the commissioning of public art, and to suggest ways of accommodating the various interests so as to manage those controversies that may occur. Our analysis centers upon the interactions of three "parties," each with its own interests to be served: 1) the artists, who desire artistic freedom, recognition, and security for their work; 2) the commissioning public agency, which is responsible for the promotion of the long-term aesthetic welfare of society, while confronting immediate political and procedural constraints upon its actions; and 3) the public, which must assent to the funding and give community acceptance to the particular works installed in its midst.