What is the link between art and money What is the link between art and money? The value and pricing of art is an abstract endeavor but with established practices. What are some of the ways value is established in a piece of art? What is provenance? Does the artist matter in the provenance of a artwork? Does provenance equal good art? What happens to many paintings after they have been auctioned off at such a high value? Are they available to be seen by the public? Do you think the owner has a responsibility to share these works of art with the public? Why or why not? Is art collecting/buying in any way a gendered pursuit? Why or why not?

The Role of Museums and Cultural Institutions

Habermas - Art Criticism and the Institutions of the Public Sphere The coffeehouses of the 1700s. The concept of the public sphere. The public sphere exists to promote civic engagement in communicative processes of opinion and will formation.

“[t]he bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public” (Habermas [1962] 1989: 27). Individuals can assert their privacy only in relation to, rather than in isolation from, the existence of other individuals. The public sphere is the socialized expression of individuals’ reciprocally constituted autonomy: individuals are autonomous not in isolation from but in relation to one another, that is, in relation to a public of autonomous beings. Indeed, the public and the private seem to represent two necessary conditions of the social: to the extent that every private person is represented by the foreground performativity of a public persona, every public persona is embedded in the background subjectivity of a private person. Since human actors cannot escape the various socialization processes imposed upon them by their environment, the purest form of privacy cannot eliminate individuals’ dependence upon society.

Regardless of the size and composition of the public sphere, all shared a common institutional criteria: They preserved social discourse that disregarded status altogether. The discussions in these public spheres presupposed the problematization of areas that until then had not been questioned. ‘Common Concern’ expanded to the masses. The navigating of capitalism required a rational orientation that required much information. The discourse in public spaces enabled this.

The evolution of music into the public sphere. Music was originally for worship, the festivities of the court or church, or splendor of ceremony. Composers were appointed and commissioned for specific pieces. Collegia Musica were formed as public concert societies. Admission was charged turning musical performance into commodity, but first time music not tied to a purpose. “Released from its functions in the service of social representation, art became an object of free choice and of changing preference.” ‘Taste’ became public.

The Sociological Understanding of Art Institutions Sociologists study the cultural institution within two distinct frameworks: The organizational vehicles which permit the creation of museums as institutions that endure over time. The classes which sponsored the institutionalization of art as high culture in museums.

The Institutionalization of High Culture

Paul DiMaggio (1982), a sociologist of culture, distinguishes three processes for the institutionalization of high culture: Entrepreneurship – creating an organizational base for high culture Classification – creating boundaries between ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’ Framing – the elaboration of a normative etiquette for the appropriation of art.

The containers of high culture The urban elites of 19th century American society were central to the creation of many of the high culture museums of today, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The museum as a reflection of controlling powers and expected norms and practices as dictated by those powers. Walking through the museum, according to a script ordered by architecture and display installations, and commented on by the museums own iconography, the viewer experiences the history of art as the development of a national tradition through the achievements of individual geniuses. The state endows the visitor-citizen with this patrimony in return for affective commitment to the modern capitalist social order with its individualistic and nationalistic values.

The Art Museum: Social Organization and Cultural Agent

Alternative to power interpretation: The museum as autonomous organization that plays its elites, the state, and corporate sponsors against each other to maintain this autonomy.

Museums are continuously reinvented through time. Art institutions proliferated with the establishment of professional associations such as the College Art Association and the American Association of Museums. These organizations became the point of reference for museum standards as opposed to the elites who first set the standards for each museum.

The Neoliberalization of the Cultural Institution Management focuses on economic growth using budgetary measures and financial systems to be able to show rational accountability to institutional funders. Public services drop out, restaurants and gift shops proliferate. The role of the curator. Masters degree in arts administration. PhD in Art History

Museums as Social and Cultural Agitator Museum removes all of its art made by immigrants Museums economically revive regions Dia Beacon MassMoCa PS1 https://www.guggenheim.org/ - Museum as Franchise?

Institutional Critique Artists Four ways to critique the museum as institution: Daniel Buren - critique of traditional exhibition practices Hans Haacke - critique of institutional power (economic) Guerrilla Girls - critique of institutional power (gender) Mierle Laderman Ukeles - critique of institutional experience

Discussion Questions What is the public sphere? How does the public sphere enable structural transformation? What are some of the art world’s public spheres? What is the role of the art critic in the public sphere? What is the role of the internet in the public sphere?