Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Everything about the arts is profoundly affected by government policy. Copyright, tax law, real estate and land use regulations, welfare and income redistribution programs, public health and education are consequential for the art world. In turn, the arts are too important for policymakers to ignore (whether they know it or not). We offer a graduate/undergraduate public policy course in arts and cultural policy for art students, ‘generalists’ (public policy minors), and policy analysis masters students, that reviews the most important art-relevant public policies, with international examples, through the lenses of economics, politics, and engagement with art. We teach the course in an active classroom format, with minimal lecturing and open-ended student projects and discussion, where these groups engage with each other across disciplinary boundaries. The underlying criterion for policy that the class usually comes to adopt is Does this policy generate “more, better, engagement, by more people, with art”? How could it do that [even] better? We emphasize its differentiation from other implicit criteria like “higher incomes for artists” or “larger collections in museums”. Assigned readings are drawn from economics, sociology, psychology, and public deliberation, and also what a wide sample of artists have had to say through their work. Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, for example is a resource with which to explore leadership, art and community, the complementarity of innovation and tradition in both art and policy, and more. Students report that meeting new works, forms, and media is a valued element of the course.