This is a collection of essays on the emerging field of cultural policy. The culture wars of the early 1990s obscured broader challenges facing America's cultural life in the next century. Artists, scholars, and policymakers from many disciplines and across the political spectrum have recognized the need to move beyond debates over government funding for the arts and humanities and toward an array of issues regarding culture's role in society.

What should be the ideology underlying federal arts funding? What innovative ways can be found to improve the financial stability of arts organizations? How can new talent be encouraged? What are the differing impacts of private, governmental, and nonprofit support for the arts? What might be learned from a better understanding of international models of cultural policy? How will policy be affected by global transformations and the challenges of cyberspace? The Politics of Culture brings together important recent thinking in this field and provides a compelling agenda for the future of American cultural policy.

CONTENTS

• Preface.
• A Note from the Editors.
• Introduction.

Part I: Defining Culture and Cultural Policy

• Introduction.
• Culture is Ordinary.
• Invoking Culture: The Messy Side of Cultural Politics.
• Social Structure, Institutions, and Cultural Goods: The Case of the The Arts and the Public Purpose.
• Creative America: A Report to the President.
• Designing a Cultural Policy.
• Policy Communities and Policy Influence: Securing a Government Role in Cultural Policy for the Twenty-First Century.

Part II: Supporting Culture

• Introduction.
• Culture and the State of America.
• A New Mission for the NEA.
• Leverage Lost: Evolution in the Nonprofit Arts Ecosystem.
• The Age of Audience.
• Pictures at an Exhibition: Conflicting Pressures in Museums and the Display of Art. Making Change: Museums and Public Life.
• Coercive Philanthropy.
• The Humanities, the Universities, and Public Policy.
• The Artist As Public Intellectual.
• Commencement Address: The Gift of Good Work.

Part III: Culture and Policy from the Local to the Global

• Introduction.
• Judy Baca: SPARC The Social and Public Arts Resource Arts Impact Studies: A Fashionable Excess.
• Re-Presenting the City: Arts, Culture, and Diversity in Philadelphia.
• Cultural Policy Options in the Context of Globalization.
• The Policy Landscape.
• The New Study and Curation of Culture.

This is a collection of essays on the emerging field of cultural policy. The culture wars of the early 1990s obscured broader challenges facing America's cultural life in the next century. Artists, scholars, and policymakers from many disciplines and across the political spectrum have recognized the need to move beyond debates over government funding for the arts and humanities and toward an array of issues regarding culture's role in society. (from abstract)