Patronage as a way out of crisis? the case of major cultural institutions in Spain

ABSTRACT

Drawing on both resource dependence theory and institutional theory, this study attempts to explore how, as a result of the financial crisis of 2008 and the drastic cuts to public funding for culture, corporate sponsorship has been acquiring an increasingly important role in the financial structure and internal organisation of large cultural facilities. Based on a sample of fifteen of Spain’s most emblematic cultural institutions located in the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, the application of these two complementary theories offers an insight into the growth in direct donors’ contributions to major state-owned cultural institutions in Spain, while also helping to explain the influence of institutional environments on organisations, with an emphasis on the central role that board composition plays in fundraising income.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts governance
• board composition
• cultural institutions
• cultural policy
• financial crisis
• patronage
• Spain

Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to Ruth Rentschler and Wendy Reid for commenting on an earlier version of the article, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Consejería de Ciencia, Universidades e Investigación. Comunidad de Madrid: [Grant Number MADMUSIC.REF: H2019/HUM-5731]; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación: [Grant Number Ref. RTI2018-096299-B-I00]; Catalan Government: [Grant Number 2017 SGR 422].