Arts management and the autonomy of art

Abstract

While arts management developed as a subject field within business administration in the Anglo‐American world several decades ago, it is only recently that it has started to establish itself in the Nordic countries. However, the increased focus on the administrative and financial aspects of artistic activity which the arts management tradition seems to embody may be interpreted as being a threat to the autonomy of art, and an illustration of ongoing dedifferentiation processes. In this article, I will question whether the increased emphasis on the financial and administrative aspects in the management of art institutions should primarily be interpreted as resulting from differentiation or dedifferentiation. Empirically, the article will be based on a case study of a large Norwegian theatre. The article will show how the border area between what is seen as the artistic domain, on the one hand, and the economic and administrative domain, on the other, is established and reproduced through dominant discourses within the theatre. On the theoretical level, these findings will be interpreted as a result of differentiation and not dedifferentiation processes.

Keywords:

• arts management
• autonomy of art
• differentiation
• dedifferentiation

Notes

1. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews and documents. The material includes interviews with 15 persons working in different positions at the theatre. The interviews were carried out during 2001–2004. In the article I quote from these interviews, which were originally transcribed in Norwegian. Although I have tried to translate as precisely as possible, some of the meaning may inevitably have been lost or changed through the translation process.

2. This specification seems problematic. Firstly, it can be objected that the distinction beautiful/ugly is not exclusive to art. For instance, we see other people as being beautiful or ugly. Secondly, in a lot of contemporary art the ideal of beauty appears to be a relic of the past. Rather, it is the aesthetics of ugliness that seems to be constitutive. Luhmann, however, claims that even if it seems problematic to insist on this dichotomy as representing the core value in relation to communication on art, no convincing alternative has been proposed (Luhmann 2000[1995], p. 195). According to Luhmann, the appreciation of beauty in the communication on art does not concern the motif of a work of art or the referent of the motif in reality. Nor is the beauty an inherent quality of the work of art. According to Luhmann, the binary code of art is related to the formative elements of a work of art, the central question being ‘whether a given form does or does not fit, whether it can be integrated into the emerging work (or into the work one is about to inspect) in ways that secure connectivity’ (p. 193).

3. Even if many theatres today are managed by women, the theatre manager has traditionally been a man. Thus, the myth of the theatre manager is primarily a masculine myth.

4. Teatret Vårt is a regional theatre institution located in the north‐western part of Norway. The name means ‘Our theatre’ and was originally a nickname which a group of actors brought with them when they left the capital, Oslo, and settled down in Molde to establish the new theatre in 1972.

5. Organisations refer to employers associations, labour organisations, business organisations and large NGOs.

6. See Morgenbladet (2004). Morgenbladet is a weekly newspaper with a niche profile on culture and commentaries.

7. The new sales manager is not the same person as the sales manager I interviewed. In the period between the interview with the sales manager and the executive director there has been a change of sales manager.