The art world’s response to the challenge of inequality

Kristina Kolbe, Chris Upton-Hansen, Mike Savage, Nicola Lacey and Sarah Cant

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper considers the challenges which rising economic inequality poses to the art world with a special focus on museums and galleries in the UK. Based on interviews with artists, curators and managers of leading art institutions in London, we discuss how issues of economic inequality are reflected in their thinking about cultural work and how these relate to questions of spatial power, post-colonial sensibilities and diversity issues. We show how increasing economic inequality brings about deep-seated, systematic and sustained challenges which extend well beyond public funding cuts associated with austerity politics to a wider re-positioning of the arts away from its location in a distinctive public sphere and towards elite private privilege. Against this backdrop, we put forward the term ‘the artistic politics of regionalism’ and suggest that the most promising approaches to addressing contemporary inequalities lie in institutions’ reconsideration of spatial dynamics which can link concerns with decolonisation and representation to a recognition of how economic inequality takes a highly spatialised form.

Keywords: economic; inequality; colonial; art; privilege (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-hme
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:103146

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