Pictures at an Exhibition: Conflicting Pressures in Museums and the Display of Art

Alexander, Victoria D.

doi:10.1086/230781

Cited by 106 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Museums serve mainly as public art collectors and are funded by various types of stakeholders, including professional organizations, foundations, governments, and individual philanthropists. As representatives of these stakeholders, museums act as gatekeepers with respect to artistic quality but do not necessarily assess the artist's work from the perspective of profit (Alexander, 1996;Greenfeld, 1988). Museums consider themselves an alternative to the commercial art world and differentiate themselves from the commercial sphere.…”

Section: Audience-specific Reputations In the Contemporary Art Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this regard, museums and galleries in the contemporary art field face different levels of accountability. Because museums are typically funded by sponsors such as corporations, philanthropists, governments, foundations, and professional associations (Alexander, 1996), museum curators must address the requests and expectations of a diverse set of funders (e.g., Perry, 2014;Robertson, 2006 Oil was one of the Tate's sponsors at the time. Recent news stories in England regarding the relationship between funders (specifically, BP) and how these relationships might affect the Tate's freedom and policies also indicate that these types of concerns remain relevant for museums (e.g., Brown, 2015bBrown, , 2015a.…”

Section: Audience-specific Reputations In the Contemporary Art Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result, a particular artist might have a valuable audience-specific reputation with one audience, but not with another, because of his/her reputation for a particular attribute. A reputation for artistic quality enables artists to secure exhibitions at museums (Alexander, 1996;Greenfeld, 1988), while a reputation for the commercial viability enables artists to secure exhibitions at galleries (Caves, 2003;Thompson, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Art of Representation: How Audience-specific Reputations Affect Success in the Contemporary Art Field

Ertug

Yogev

Lee

et al. 2016

AMJ

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AcknowledgmentWe would like to thank Tim Pollock and the three anonymous reviewers for their excellent suggestions and guidance. We would also like to thank Martin Gargiulo, Matteo Prato, Heeyon Kim, Abhijith G. Acharya, Fabrizio Castellucci, Yi Tang, and Francois Collet for their valuable feedback, as well as participants at presentations at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation and at Singapore Management University. We would also like to express our gratitude for the financial support we have received from the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research 2 THE ART OF REPRESENTATION: HOW AUDIENCE-SPECIFIC REPUTATIONS AFFECT SUCCESS IN THE CONTEMPORARY ART FIELD ABSTRACTWe study the effects of actors' audience-specific reputations on their levels of success with different audiences in the same field. Extending recent work that has emphasized the presence of multiple audiences with different concerns, we demonstrate that considering audience specificity leads to an improved understanding of reputation effects. Using data on emerging artists in the field of contemporary art from 2001 to 2010, we investigate the manner in which artists' audience-specific reputations affect their subsequent success with two distinct audiences: museums and galleries. Our findings suggest that audience-specific reputations have systematically different effects with respect to success with museums and galleries. Our findings also illuminate the extent to which audience-specific reputations are relevant for emerging research on the contingent effects of reputation. In particular, our findings support our predictions that audiences differ from one another in terms of the extent to which other signals (specifically, status and interaction with other audiences) enhance or reduce the value of audience-specific reputations. Our study thus advances theory by providing empirical evidence for the value of incorporating audience-specific reputations into the general study of reputation.3

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Section: Audience-specific Reputations In the Contemporary Art Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Audience-specific Reputations In the Contemporary Art Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Art of Representation: How Audience-specific Reputations Affect Success in the Contemporary Art Field

Ertug

Yogev

Lee

et al. 2016

AMJ

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“…For instance, wealthy individuals, as philanthropists and as trustees in arts organizations, have personal (both idiosyncratic and prestige-seeking) and social class (elitist) interests, but they also act for the wider good, as they see it (Ostrower, 1995(Ostrower, , 2002. In a study of art museum exhibitions, Alexander (1996aAlexander ( , 1996b shows that, as funders support only those exhibitions that they prefer, the proportion of preferred exhibitions increases across the entire program of special exhibitions.…”

Section: Arts Institutions and Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonprofit arts organizations have become more managerial and less elitist (wanting to broaden audiences) in the past several decades (Alexander, 1996a(Alexander, , 1996b). …”

Section: Arts Institutions and Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Art at the crossroads: The arts in society and the sociology of art

Alexander

Bowler

2014

Poetics

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The arts face a number of challenges in the 21 st century brought about by various factors.These include rapid expansion of art markets at an international level, the impact of economic restructuring in public funding for the arts, the increasing dominance of neoliberal models of institutional and organizational success, changes in the definition of artistic work and artistic identity, and changes in the definition of audiences and new modes of arts participation in the face of technological innovations in communication technologies. In this paper, we identify and analyze six major themes central to the arts and the sociology of art: the marginalization of the arts in society and sociology, art and the state, arts institutions and organizations, artists and audiences, and issues of meaning and measurement. We argue that the arts and arts scholarship face a crossroads in the current environment. We conclude with some observations about directions for future research. Drawing inspiration from these changes in arts worlds and their implications for both the arts and arts scholarship, we explore six major themes central to the arts and the sociology of the arts in the current environment. Each of the themes-the marginalization of the arts in society and sociology, changing markets, art and the state, institutions and organizations, artists and audiences, and issues of meaning and measurement-includes observations about changes in the art world as well, as a discussion of scholarship in the area. We conclude with a discussion of directions for future research. It is our hope that this article will provide a useful overview of the state of arts scholarship at this challenging time, and suggestions for its future development. The articles in this special issue of Poetics are a contribution to that development. The marginalization of the arts in society and sociology 3The arts have occupied a marginalized position in both modern society and the discipline of sociology. Historically and today, the arts have been judged less important than other areas of study for the social sciences. As a recognized area of specialization, the sociology of art is relatively new and still developing (see below). The marginalization of art in society may be less obvious or even puzzling. After all, the arts hold an exalted, even sacred, position in society; they have the ability to confer status honor on the people who consume and possess expert knowledge about them; and expensive sales of art are reported frequently in the media. But as we demonstrate below, it is precisely this exalted status that results in the marginalization of the arts in the broader social context.The sharp, hierarchical distinction between the fine and popular arts that was drawn in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries created a dichotomous model of aesthetic objects and practices, the institutions and audiences to which they belong, and the functions or purposes they serve (DiMaggio, 1982a(DiMaggio, , 1982bLevine, 1988). 2 Put simply, the fine arts were ...

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