Course ID#: G49.1015 (Sponsor: G65.1015)
Section: 1
Cultural Policy and Cultural Patronage in the United States
Elective. 4 points.

The unique development of funding for the arts and culture in the United States is the result of particular cultural ideas and anxieties. This course explores the vicissitudes of cultural policy and the development of public and private arts patronage systems in the United States. We begin our exploration by taking stock of current issues in cultural policy and placing them in historical context. We explore the ways in which certain social ideas give rise to particular organizational forms; for example, how social reformist notions of art resulted in the non-profit arts organization, and how Cold War-era anxieties about America's place in the international arena contributed to the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts. Finally, we analyze the exchange of economic, cultural, and symbolic capital that characterizes all patronage relationships, including sometimes controversial cases of public arts funding and of corporate philanthropy. Readings in the sociology of culture, anthropology, social history, art history, and organizational studies inform our study of the economic dimensions of art worlds. Authors include Mauss, DiMaggio, Balfe, Zolberg, Yudice and Miller, Ostrower, Bourdieu, and Haacke, among others.