Museums and Communities - Week 4

Learning Community: Lessons in Co-Creating the Civic Museum (Thelan, 2001)

• some see civic engagement as the way to preserve the health of cultural institutions
• civics as a way to build social capital
• "The civic issue is power, not trust" (2)
• watchword of civic engagement becomes co-creation, not dialogue
• participants share their skills and resources in the creation of agents for solving problems
• question for museums of whether to extend out or work from within
• follow U. of Minnesota's example of imbuing civic engagement into every aspect of the institution
• don't 'do' civic engagement; be civically engaged
• problems of how to collaborate with groups, deal with controversial subjects, and imagine the future of museums
• problems with partnerships sometimes lie in (perceived?) unequal levels of authority between the museum professionals and the community members
• how to work together with community (Warhol article)
• claim that Americans trust museums, but disagreement on that source of trust
• Is it their objective display? Is it the ability to engage with objects directly?
• article seems to claim that objects in a museum aren't mediated, at least not as much as history books or similar items
• Thelen claims that the significance of the Museums and Community is immense, but does not really explain why

Online Activity and Offline Community: Cultural Institutions and New Media Art (Cook, 2007)

• place as based on social habitats, not geography
• museums have difficulty in engaging in Net-based art: how to present it? how to let viewers ('normally passive') interact with it?
• new media art demands collaboration
• technology can be utilized in the creation, production, and/or dissemination of the art
• Internet: not a medium, but rather a location for this art to be created
• questionability of the materiality of this space--it can have material effects in the physical world
• created by and for on- and offline communities
• by its very nature, it is participatory/socially-engaged work
• Net art in the museum
• how to produce/distribute?
• how to reconcile the passive viewing experience in an art museum with the interactivity of net art?
• concept of curating "emerging art": creativity emerging through new forms of media
• FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool)
• web used to bring about communication and create culture in an offline community
• similarity between new media and multiculturalism and public art: extends space beyond the frame (of the artwork) to the rest of the world
• Net-based art: all about engaging with the net, with the communities created by it or drawn to it, rather than the net itself (not about the object, but about the engagement)

Museums and Community Involvement: A Case Study of Community Collaborative Initiatives - National Museums of Kenya (Mhando Nyangila, 2006)

• "Museums are about people and created by the people themselves"
• community defined by ethnic bond, sharing a common cultural identity (racial origins, religion, nationality, or tribal affiliation)
• later defines community by a shared geographic region as well as common interests, values, customs,  and beliefs
• museum community: visitors, people who live and work in its vicinity, stakeholders, donators (funding or collection items)
• community engagement: community members participating directly in decision making in museum programs and activities
• benefits of community involvement: trust, understanding, sense of identity, and creating a museum more relevant to the community
• roles of museum: custodians of cultural heritage, with added responsibility to "assist national and civic governments as well as the civil society in responding to community and societal problems and developmental needs"
• different ways of involving community in custodian work: bringing them to the museum, or bringing the museum skills to them
• advantages
• participatory approach
• sustainability purposes
• ownership
• capacity building
• increased awareness of importance/value of their culture
• claim that museums can contribute to society by eradicating poverty and empowering communities economically
• employment in museums or museum-related fields
• share teaching styles with other institutions, promoting interactivity for increased learning, sharing educational tools
• travelling library
• conserving built heritage
• preserving indigenous/folk culture
• biodiversity conservation
• conservation of cultural landscapes, bottle gour diversity
• development of butterfly farm: museum helping a community create a business which other museums are interested in 
• Ecotourism project: help communities explore alternate economic livelihoods that don't endanger the sacred forests 
• where do communities and museums interact? outward of the museum space or from within?
• activities involving communities beyond the traditional museum space in activities of understanding and preserving culture with other social/economic benefits
• special events and free admission to attract people to the museum and introduce the general public to its activities
• museum has a role to address the community, not act as a 'foreign' institution
• in article, it seems that the duty of preserving both natural and cultural heritage falls to the national museum

The Warhol: Museum as Artist: Creative, Dialogic, and Civic Practice (Gogan)

• museum as answer to question: What does it mean to be a human being? (Postman)
• "The art museum experience becomes less about looking at art, and more about making sense of the world" (12)
• museum as site of collection AND education
• museum taking on role of church: becoming source of civic pride in America
• community as created through shared practice; community engagement is museum's community of practice engaging with another
• Warhol: believed in museum as a site for art production, considered the role of the curator creative
• museum as artist
• creative role as interpretor, provocateur, and catalyst
• focus on engaging in "the work of art," imbuing the museum with "creative agency"
• museums and artists as bodies able to borrow skills from one another
• Warhol museum: mission to be a forum
• The Without Sanctuary Project
• focus on lynching in America; museum wanted to be a forum for contemporary race issues; while not necessarily encouraging it, they also tried to keep opportunities for dialogue about other forms of oppression (particularly against gays) open
• photographs and postcards, historical timeline, opportunities for dialogue/informal visitor feedback
• made public privatized responses to the exhibit 
• found ways to connect people to the museum and what they had experienced through visitor-created material after the exhibit ended (personal postcards)
• people participated more heavily in the informal dialogues as opposed to the formal facilitated dialogues
• process of "public looking" within a museum
• difficulty in framing/contextualizing such a tough, emotional issue within an art museum
• some did feel that the exhibit was verging on being too 'art museum as history museum'
• provided information on "next steps" visitors could take, ways to take action
• collaborated with schools and community groups for special activities/events
• some teachers questioned how necessary the images of the exhibit were to teach lessons of tolerance to students
• others felt pictures were what led people to feel they understood "the truth of history"
• museum saw images as a "table for conversation"--difference responses to the universality or specificity of those images/how they were presented
• "When we gather to talk around an image, we all start from the same place"
• "mutability" of contexts within the exhibit
• issue of having this exhibit curated by an all-white staff; brought in African-Americans from the community
• avoidance of essentializing the themes of the discussions
• image, context, and response were considered equally
• exhibit as catalyst of discussion beyond walls of museum
• focus on curating TOGETHER with audiences
• museums and community members sharing their own "expert knowledge" with each other
• problem: how to retain voice/experience/skills as curator while opening up your work to the general public?
• engaged an experienced outside local facilitator in the process of the conceptualization and creation of the exhibit
• use of "key workers" from outside museum
• follow-up/aftermath
• educational tools for regional schools
• community art projects
• surge of good will expressed toward museums
• community members seeing museum as a resource
• Andy Warhol's Electric Chairs: Reflecting on Capital Punishment in America
• problem of portraying controversial issue of death penalty
• how to balance wants and needs of two different sponsors/involved parties: Amnesty International and District Attorneys association
• how to act as the mediator between the two
• how to present a "neutral" stance on the issue, or at least to appear not to be favoring one over the other
• how to keep these organizations wanting to be involved in the project/exhibit
• how to deal with the issue that the museum/staff are all on one side of the issue
• featured contextual information from wide variety of people/opinions
• engaged public in creating zines for people to take home with them which featured fact and opinions from both sides of the issue
• does the art museum have a role for advocacy?
• intended effect: make audience "think" without forcing them to choose one side in particular (different from Without Sanctuary)
• goal to be dialogic, not "do dialogue"
• "We attempt to make meaning of art and society together with our audiences" (32)

Questions/Comments

• How can Thelan claim the museum as some unmediated space?  What is the relationship between the objects and the way they are presented within a museum?
• Using new media art within an art museum seems to be one possible way to increase interactivity because it's inherent in the nature of the art itself.  However, how are the networks of the art defined in this context?
• Must there really be this difference between the "passive" viewers and the "interactive" ones?  Are there different ways to interact with the art? With something/someone else?  What does it mean to be interacting? What value does it hold?
• How can new media be harnessed to strengthen already existing offline communities?
• If we consider museums to be a trusted force within a community, how can they expand their duties/activities beyond their custodian work?  Considering the Kenyan example, how can they reach out and fulfill community needs in perhaps unexpected ways?
• Would it be possible to implement the Kenyan model of the museum's work in America?  In what places would this type of work be effective and successful?
• process as just as/more important than the product
• look into how Without Sanctuary exhibit was treated when it travelled to different venues (New York Historical Society, somewhere in Atlanta)
• How does the timing and location of an exhibit affect its contextualization and the responses to it?
• How does the staff differ from the institution?
• Do museums have an advocacy role? Can they?

Additional Reading:

Abungu, G. (1998). Museums without walls. International Museum Conference 23rd to 28th August 1998.

Alpha Oumar Konare--supporter of concent of community involvement

Museums and Communities - Week 3

AAM Museums and Community Resolution

• "The American Association of Museums urges all museums to embrace their responsibility to be active and collaborative civic institutions and to respond to the aspirations and needs of citizens in their communities."
• museums as cultural symbols, contributors to community enterprise, stewards of collections, providers of educational experiences, transformers of world views
• "encourage people to... recognize truths that unify all generations and define our common humanity"
• if this is true, this is one way that museums can help develop community ties and create social bonds
• new role for museums in community, which AAM aims to support
• collaborate with community for the community's benefit
• increase museum's participation in community life and vice versa
• "requires sharing creativity, vision, responsibility, and resources"
• achieve diversity within museum to reflect diversity in community

AAM Cultivating Community Connections

• constituents are demanding that museums play a bigger role within their communities
• time of building social capital and social networks: find ways to bring people together
• Museums and Community Initiative: support museums who may not currently have the organizational capacity to build community partnerships
• need adequate time and money, a strong leadership commitment, an organizational culture that embraces change, and staff skilled at listening to community voices and establishing community relationships
• “civic engagement”—individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern
• “social capital”—a set of informal values or norms shared among members of a group that permit them to cooperate with one another
• civic role must be explored throughout the entire execution rather than one group of programmers
• collaborations with non-cultural institutions can be helpful
• partnerships can generate a sense of pride and ownership among participants
• core values: accessibility and inclusiveness
• possibility to form new, broader definitions of community than the immediate surrounding
• diversity within the museum can be helpful
• strong community partnerships are based on trust and reciprocity--more than just the museum's agenda; need for an ongoing dialogue
• first museums must ensure that their processes, decision-making, and actions are open, available, and understandable to the public
• hire people trained in dealing with communities, such as social service workers

Companion to Museum Studies: Elizabeth Crooke's "Museums and Communities"

• link between museum studies and community studies: concern for identity, representation, people, and social responsibility in the museum tied to community concerns about a greater appreciation of the formation of identity, the creation of relationships, and definitions of belonging
• with some social programs, "community" acts as a bonus word; the programs don't actually make the community a fundamental part of the implementation of the program/policy (171)
• no single definition of community, especially within the museum
• can be defined by a variety of characteristics in terms of what their connections are based on, how "thick" those connections are, the purpose/attitude of the community, etc.
• a community is more than some amalgamation of people with similar interests or tied to a similar location: "It is not enough to have the characteristics of community; rather, it is essential to have the motivation to bring these into a self-forming unit." (173)
• communities have a role in generating collective identity and generating senses of belonging (174)
• The District Six Museum, Cape Town
• place that memorializes history of the struggle of those who were expelled from this area 
• different from a mainstream museum, reflecting its special focus
• example of community taking their heritage into their own hands and expressing it through a museum as a place able to help build community
• Community museum networks, Mexico
• "bottom up community museum networking process"
• development of new community museums meant to impact positively "the mobilization of social capital, empowerment of the rural poor, enhancement of local government, the creation of durable partnerships between the state and civil society, and the creation of local defenses against the homogenizing forces of cultural globalization" (176)
• focus on building collective ownership, self-esteem, knowledge and pride in cultural origins, and the creation of cultural identity
• aim to forge community by improving the economic potential of the area
• Community exhibitions in Northern Ireland 
• "short-lived local history exhibitions curated by community organizations" (176)
• "identity projects"
• exercise in community autobiography, accomplished collectively
• exhibition seen not as the end, but as an important part of the process of the creation of community identity
• the use of the word "community" can become exclusive if people feel as if they are not a part of the community the exhibition is targeting
• strength in being led by community members, but the exhibitions could have a slant for that reason (risking nostalgia, over-simplicity, or unintended exclusivity)
• culture as a means to build social capital (180)
• engagement with the idea of "community" is forcing museums to rethink the identity, role, and social worth of the museum space (183)
• democratizing history and the museum space connected to idea of increasing community participation

Companion to Museum Studies: Gordon Fyfe's "Sociology and the Social Aspects of Museums"

• details historical relationship of sociology and museums to industrialization, political revolution, and the formation of nation-states
• commitment to reason and rationality
• concern "with understanding and ordering a world thought to be disordered by industrial and political revolutions" (34)
• does this hold with the facts presented in the other readings this week?
• new ways about thinking of museum space (35)
• heterotopic space (place outside of all other places within which other places and times were "represented, contested, and reversed")
• characteristically Western, universalizing, heteratopia that aspired to contain all times, ages, forms, and tastes in one space
• museum has the ability to transfigure societies as communities and nations
• diverse research methods were developed to deal with museum studies
• museum research may be skewed as most research has been conducted in/concering art museums
• Adorno: saw museums as places that "neutralized culture" and destroyed 'the pleasure of looking' (37)
• barriers to certain class's participation in the museum: exclusivity, creation of a sense of inferiority
• concern for diversity of museum personnel, not just the diversity of the museum visitors
• role of heritage and the heritage industry in 20th century (40)
• the implicit power of collections: problems of ownership, collecting as a form of "symbolic domination" (43)
• collection became "centers of calculation and permitted people to see new things" (45)

Companion to Museum Studies: George E. Hein's Museum Education

• constant tension between curatorial role and educational role of museum
• museums are considered educational institutions
• museums have a "social responsibility" to provide education
• "a constructivist or progressive educational mission necessarily puts an emphasis on social change" (349)
• importance of education to progressive educators: "faith in democracy and in the efficacy of education to produce a more democratic society" (349) 
• 4 implications of Dewey's belief for museums (349-350)
• questioning of dualisms
• goal of education is further education
• challenge visitors and themselves
• connect educational work back to live
• collections within the context of a public museum should take on an educational role
• two periods of museum education reform:
• mid-19th century - pre WWI: focus on illustrating national/imperial strength, investigating scientific problems, and somewhat education
• post WWI: explosion of museum education, focus on nationalist political themes and exhibiting new conceptions of art and science
• previously there had been no formal education staff at museums
• educational workforce of museum became primarily female, following typical gender divisions in society (344)
• three museum "philosophies"
• educational museum
• aesthetic museum
• social museum
• concept that museums were education resources for adults while schools were meant to educate children
• Gilman: focus on helping the "Sunday visitor" to understand the collections (343)
• problem: how to deal with the "passive" learning at museums
• problem: how to measure the learning that takes place at museums
• museums have unfavorable conditions for school-like learning and assessment (ex. graded tests)
• coincides with redefinition of education as a "meaningful experience" rather than a "defined content outcome" (348)
• new strategies have been created to engage visitors (have them make their own labels, ask them provocative questions instead of giving them answers, etc.)

Companion to Museum Studies: Jeffrey Abt's "The Origins of the Public Museum"

• traces history of public museum back through the Louvre and the Ashmolean Museum (usually considered the first public museums) back to Aristotle's Lyceum and its mouseion
• discusses political implications of these early forms of museums
• ex: Greek statuary displayed in Rome's public arena communicated state's power and reach to res publica but also foreigners (118)
• role of stewardship and ownership tied to these places
• "public" and "private" could overlap in libraries in Rome (c. 30-20 BCE)
• Renaissance: beginnings of collections
• "musaeum" applied to "characterize these collections, their settings, and the encyclopedic ambitions of their creators, and the kinds of objects collected" (120)
• presentation of artifacts moved to "less approachable" places/locations: from outdoors to indoors (121)
• Ashmolean: intended as public museum
• it and other museums slowly began to accomodate more visitors form varying background and classes
• some saw these non-elite audiences as a problem which hurt the mission/value of the museums
• most museums up to the mid 19th century were led "by private citizens pursuing commonly shared goals in concert," not government (130)
• late 19th century: focus primarily on creating art museums; also, museums became more professionalized
• American museums were considered to be a "public trust"; mentions the attention to "local constituencies" is founded on legal reasoning

Questions/Comments

• the idea that museums help people to define a common humanity is interesting when considering how museums might help to bridge gaps in communities and promote dialogue and engagement (and decrease discrimination/alienation) among different groups
• What are ways to decrease the diversity within the museum?  How does this relate to the different ideas of representation (descriptive/substantive)?
• many articles mention this need to diversity university personell
• there's also the gender connection of women being predominantly involved in the education departments of museums
• Are there examples of museums who have formed institution-wide committees to oversee their community involvement
• In what ways can a community be defined?  Is there a limit to what can constitute a community?
• How are the community museum networks in Mexico connected to developments in the government/state?  Also, what is the relationship the article suggests between their desire to increase the economic potential of these areas and forge community?  How can one lead to the other?
• How does the District Six Museum attract/involve those that weren't expelled, particularly those that still live there?
• How can "community" be used in an inclusive way, if it can?
• Hein described three different museum "philosophies."  Is it possible for a museum to adequately fulfill more than one of those philosophies?
• There's a large focus, especially in "The Public," about the tension between museum educators and curators concerning how the art should be presented and for whom it should be presented.
• strides have been made to contextualize art for lower-class visitors to help them gain some meaning from the art itself
• different waves of how public has been received at museum
• a number of curators think that education is a degradation to the art of the museum's collection, consider it a "distraction"
• trend away from public programming and toward connoisseurship within professional museum education programs 
• disagreement about the purpose of education: is it to attract the masses or just increase the elite museums already cater to
• **questions why we care if everyone goes to museums, as compared to sporting events or other cultural venues
• is this true?
• Is the solution to having a museum that caters to everyone just having multiple museums?  How are the divisions between these museums constructed?  Are these divisions more problematic than they are helpful?  Can a balance be achieved?

Further Reading

Mastering Civic Engagement: A Challenge to Museums (AAM)

A Museums and Community Toolkit (AAM)
AAM (1995) Museums in the Life of a City: Strategies for Community Partnerships. Washington: American Association of Museums.
Adam, TR. The Civic Value of Museums (New York: American ASsociation for Adult Education, 1957). 
Boylan, P.J. (1995) Heritage and cultural policy: the role of museums (www.city.ac.uk)
Delanty, G. (2003) Community. London, Routledge.
DiMaggio, P. and Useem, P. (1978) Cultural policy and public policy. Social Research, 45 (2): 356-89.
DiMaggio and Useem, P. (1978) Social class and arts consumption. Theory and Society, 5: 141-61.
von Lehn, D. and Heath, C. (n.d.) Studying "visitor behavior" in museums and galleries (www-sv.eiet.fr)
Jevons, William Stanley, "The Use and Abuse of Museums," in Methods of Social Reform (London: Macmillan, 1883).
Low, Theodore L. The Museum as Social Instrument (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1942).
Zolberg, V. (1981) Conflicting Visions in American art museums. Theory and Society, 10: 81-102.
Zolberg, V. (1994) "An elite experience for everyone": art museums, the public and cultural literacy.  In D.J. Sherman and I. Rogoff (eds), Museum Culture: Histories, Discourse, Spectacles, pp. 49-65.  London: Routledge.

An Introduction to Art and Community Development - Week 2

Arts Participation: Steps to Stronger Cultural and Community Life (Walker et. al., 2003)

• four ways people participate in arts: "they attend programs and events, encourage their children to participate, make or perform art as amateurs, or support the arts through donations of time and money"
• claim that the more way people participate, the more likely they are to participate in other aspects of civic life, but it's unclear if this is cause or correlation
• similar response if people participate in a broad genre of arts rather than a limited one
• gives benefits of different types of engagement for the arts and for community life; benefit for the arts is much more well-documented whereas benefit for community still seems more based on theory than data
• in terms of whether or not people practiced art-making publicly, there was not a clear line of what differentiated the public from the private
• way to increase civic participation: aim programs at those already interested in the arts to get them more heavily involved
• refer to ladder of increasing commitment (p. 13)
• programs for children, especially those that also engage adults, are helpful to increase interest in arts
• programs in partnership with community organizations can help to expand the arts audience 
• "Appeals to civic-mindedness appear to be one way for arts organizations to encourage more active participation in arts and cultural programs and events." (18)
• John Gardner: art and cultural institutions should take on leadership role within community for benefit of all

Cultural Development and City Neighborhoods (Rosenstein, 2009)

• cultural agencies must actively incorporate communities and their needs into cultural development in order to achieve the desired effect
• "Many analysts have critiqued policy developed out of Florida’s ideas as having undermined the diversity of urban populations and uses because it propels gentrification and privileges real-estate development over other kinds of economic and community development that benefit a broader urban population" (1)
• City cultural policy and neighborhoods
• need for cultural development in neighborhoods in addition to downtown where most of the focus has been
• development for residents, not just visitors
• "this contemporary focus does continue the tendency to geographically isolate and concentrate cultural resources around large arts and cultural institutions or commercial avenues" (2)
• support for pre-existing neighborhood cultural assets
• need to incorporate smaller neighborhood organizations into government policy on arts; a majority of arts policy is happening within the economic development departments
• cultural agencies and their leaders need to involve themselves into broader policy and decision-making discussions
• need for policy on cultural activity which can affect other aspects of public life, particularly coming from cultural agencies rather than police departments who have a different view on some cultural events 
• need for a position of authority/oversight on cultural matters within cities
• possible Cabinet-level secretary of culture as other nations have
• reminder of Lincoln Center article: "She also discussed the costs of isolating and concentrating cultural resources into the kind of 'cultural or civic centers' that were being developed in the post–World War II period, calling such projects 'tragic in their effects on their cities.'" (2)

Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts

• "The goal of the study described here was to improve the current understanding of the arts’ full range of effects in order to inform public debate and policy." (xi)
• instrumental benefits: cognitive, attitudinal/behavioral, health, social, economic
• limitations of empirical research: weaknesses in empirical methods, absence of specificity, failure to consider opportunity costs
• lack of specificity: how do specific genres/experiences rather than "the arts" have effects, and what are those effects?
• private intrinsic benefits: captivation, pleasure
• private experiences with public spillover effects: expanded capacity for empathy, cognitive growth
• public intrinsic benefits: creation of social bonds, expression of communal meanings
• increasing demand instead of supporting supply
• "This focus requires that attention and resources be shifted away from supply of the arts and toward cultivation of demand." (xvii)
• How?
• Develop language for discussing intrinsic benefits.
• Address the limitations of the research on instrumental benefits.
• Promote early exposure to the arts
• "The most promising way to develop audiences for the arts is to provide well- designed programs in the nation’s schools." (73)
• Create circumstances for rewarding arts experiences.
• Catterall: benefits of exposure to the arts increase in lower socioeconomic statuses
• types of arts involvement, "arts therapies"
• hands-on creative activity
• appreciation
• how they classify these activities is interesting in terms of genres
• DiMaggio (2002): fallacies of cultural policy
• fallacy of treatment: that all arts induce similar effects
• fallacy of homogeneity: assumption that the arts have same effect on different participants and in different settings/communities
• fallacy of the linearity of effects: assumption that benefits are generated in direct proportion to the level of arts participation
• additional fourth problem added by reading: the failure to examine the comparative advantage of the arts over other means of achieving the same effects
• Chapter 3: specific solutions to accomplish goals and outlines the effects these particular solutions will have
• economic benefits are different in measurement from others because they involve not the experiences of individuals over time but the aggregate of all individual experiences (31)
• economic studies favor bigger corporate organizations, not small community ones
• communicative power of arts: way to jointly experience private emotions, form ties with others through this process
• policy implication:
• "The key policy implication of this analysis is that greater attention should be directed to introducing more Americans to engaging arts experiences. Such an approach would require that attention and resources be shifted away from maintaining the supply of the arts and toward cultivating demand. A demand-side approach would aim to build a market for the arts by cultivating the capacity of individuals to gain benefits from arts experiences." (71)
• Appendix: outlines theoretical research; possibly a helpful reference 

Questions/Comments:

• Based on other writing that in order for changes in communities to occur, power must be given to the communities to create change themselves, how can we consider Gardner's view that art and cultural institutions should take a leadership role?
• Is it better to be increasing participation for those already participating or to be creating more avenues for those that aren't or possibly can't?  How can we accomplish both, if we can/should?
• Is there documentation on data that proves this effect arts can have on communities?
• What are some possible ways of organizing neighborhood groups and forming a centralized authority?  Is this necessary?
• What examples are there of development occurring beyond downtowns and into neighborhoods in urban settings?  How successful are these measures?
• How do we have cultural development without gentrification?
• Are there other writers who support Gift of the Muse's assertion that the focus should be on generating demand rather than supporting the arts? Are there other examples of this type of theoretical economic argument (i.e., making arguments based on traditional economic reasoning) in the arts?
• DiMaggio's crique of cultural policy is interesting to consider and does seem to hold some truth.

Further reading:

Reggae to Rachmaninoff: How and Why People Participate in Arts and Culture; Cultural Collaborations: Building Partnerships for Arts Participation; and Arts and Culture: Community Connections (policy paper based on studies used in "Arts Participation")

From Celluloid to Cyberspace: The Media Arts and the Changing Arts World

(2002) Kevin F. McCarthy and Elizabeth H. Ondaatje

Arts Education Partnerships: Lessons Learned from One School District’s Experience

(2004) Melissa K. Rowe, Laura Werber Castaneda, Tessa Kaganoff, and Abby Robyn

Gifts of the Muse Appendix

DiMaggio, Paul, “Taking the Measure of Culture: A Meeting at Princeton University, June 7–June 8, 2002,” meeting prospectus, http://www.Princeton.edu/~artspol/moc_prospectus.html, 2002.