been avid in exploring art and culture as subjects of economic inquiry, encouraging
a nexus between business and the arts.
There was an attempt in the USA to learn from the European experiences of arts
patronage. This is illustrated in Frederick Dorian’s
Commitment to Culture
(1964),
which sought to find out what Americans could learn from European patterns of
arts patronage. It was recognized that ‘private patronage has already been estab-
lished in our country’, but that it ‘alone cannot carry the burden’ (Dorian 1964:
457, 459). The case for government allocations (or subsidies) to the arts at all
levels (federal, state, and local) to complement private sponsorship never estab-
lished a strong following in the USA. The NEA, which did not exist at the time of
Dorian’s study, has been subjected to criticisms concerning liberty under govern-
ment patronage; the notable absence of a ‘secretary of state for culture’ in the USA
is a direct consequence of a distrust of a closer relationship between art and politics
(except when seeking to promote American cultural interests abroad).
A dominant motif since the 1960s has been the rise of managerial imperatives.
For example, Thomas Raymond and Stephen Greyser, both at the Harvard Busi-
ness School, and Douglas Schwalbe, an arts administrator at Harvard, founded the
Arts Administration Research Institute in 1966; and, in 1970, the trio established
the Harvard Summer School Institute in Arts Administration. Yet the emergence
of a ‘new breed’ of arts manager has been depicted as pernicious and regressive:
Trained by prestigious business schools, they are convinced that art can and
should be sold like the production and marketing of other goods. They make
no apologies and have few romantic hang-ups.
It is expected that the lack of delusions and aspirations among new arts
administrators will have a noticeable impact on the state of the industry. Being
trained primarily as technocrats, they are less likely to have an emotional
attachment to the peculiar nature of the product they are promoting. And this
attitude, in turn, will have an effect on the type of products we will soon begin
to see.
(Haacke 1986: 60–1)
Essentially, Hans Haacke was concerned that the commercial language of manage-
ment would become naturalized in the discourse and practice of managing arts and
cultural organizations. He was not alone: John Pick, for example, criticized the
adoption by British organizations of ‘half-baked Americanised notions of “manage-
ment” … . A new breed of arts managers … make[s] it clear that one should not
look
for pleasure from the Arts, but market returns’ (Pick 1986: 7).
More specifically, Haacke criticized ‘arts administration courses taught according
to the Harvard Business School case method … by professors with little or no
direct knowledge of the peculiarities of the art world’ (Haacke 1986: 61). Haacke
was taking aim at the inclusion of his celebrated 1971 dispute with the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, which was represented in
Cases for Arts Administration
,
edited by Raymond, Greyser, and Schwalbe (1975: 217–22): ‘Director of a major
museum weighs whether or not to cancel a show by controversial artist’. It goes
2
Introduction
without saying that the Haacke/Guggenheim controversy was much more complex;
it raised questions concerning the idealist concept of the autonomy of art, and the
belief that the art museum is a neutral, nonsocial, apolitical institution (for an
excellent account of the case, see Burnham 1971). The manner in which the case
study method fosters cursory debates and rewards quick and detached decision-
making with limited information has been criticized: it encourages ‘an approach to
the practice of management that is “thin” and “superficial”’, according to Henry
Mintzberg (1989: 90).
In this introductory chapter, we consider how conventional boundaries defining
arts organizations are being challenged. Keywords associated with arts manage-
ment need to be disentangled and investigated. What is the proper role of arts
management? Three commitments applicable to different types of arts organiza-
tions – to excellence and artistic integrity; to accessibility and audience develop-
ment; and to accountability and cost effectiveness – highlight the complexity
associated with their management.
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