Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-07T20:49:13.870Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

17 - Going to Extremes: Commercial and Nonprofit Valuation in the U.S. Arts System

from PART FIVE - CULTURAL POLICIES

Bill Ivey
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
Michael Hutter
Affiliation:
Witten/Herdecke University
David Throsby
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
Get access

Summary

The complex U.S. arts system is viewed with curiosity and at times even with admiration. But absent a ministry of culture or similar central cultural authority, the United States has unwittingly advanced concepts of value that poorly engage the larger public purpose. From the perspective of an arts-management insider, valuation today resides in either the popular or the precious. However, one view overstates the significance of art as asset and commodity, and the other overstates the importance of the supply-side desires of refined arts elites. “Art-as-commodity” in the arts industries, and the “art-is-what-you-need-even-if-you-don't-want-it” view in the nonprofit arts, have generated unhelpful practices while raising thorny public policy questions. To illuminate specific problems and outline possible solutions, we must engage in a kind of reverse engineering, looking to the development of U.S. for-profit and nonprofit arts industries for factors that shape divergent definitions of value. To the extent that trade in U.S. arts products has spread the model of copyright-protected revenue streams around the world, and to the degree that countries with strong traditions of government support for culture seek to emulate U.S. cultural philanthropy, the unique challenges posed by commercial and nonprofit valuation in the U.S. arts system are object lessons of global significance.

Value in the for-profit arts

The 2004 merger between Sony Music and BMG has, among other things, put the two most consequential archives of recorded American music and spoken word assembled during the twentieth century under the ownership of a single, non-U.S. corporation.

Type
Chapter
Information
Beyond Price
Value in Culture, Economics, and the Arts
, pp. 283 - 298
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, Tim. 2005. Survey of Reissues of U.S. Recordings. CLIR Reports, Pub. 133. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources.Google Scholar
Carey, John. 2005. What Good Are the Arts?London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul J. 1991. Cultural Entrepreneurship in 19th-Century Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America. In Mukerji, Chandra and Schudson, Michael, eds., Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, 374–397. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rockefeller Brothers Fund. 1965. The Performing Arts: Problems and Prospects, Rockefeller Panel Report No. 7. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Straight, Michael. 1988. Nancy Hanks: An Intimate Portrait. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bradford, Gigi, Gary, Michael, and Wallach, Glenn, eds. 2000. The Politics of Culture: Policy Perspectives for Individuals, Institutions, and Communities. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Brenson, Michael. 2001. Visionaries and Outcasts: The NEA, Congress, and the Place of the Visual Artist in America. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul J., ed. 1986. Nonprofit Enterprise in the Arts: Studies in Mission and Constraint. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eliot, Marc. 1989. Rockonomics: The Money behind the Music. New York: Franklin Watts.Google Scholar
Levy, Alan Howard. 1997. Government and the Arts: Debates over Federal Support of the Arts in America from George Washington to Jesse Helms. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Munson, Lynne. 2000. Exhibitionism: Art in an Era of Intolerance. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.Google Scholar
Passman, Donald S. 2000. All You Need to Know about the Music Business, revised ed. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Andre. 2000. The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Zeigler, Joseph Wesley. 1994. Arts in Crisis: The National Endowment for the Arts Versus America. Chicago: A Capella Books.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×