and selling goods and services. As such, it is central to the functioning of market
economies’, according to the OECD (1997: 151). The focus is not on the ‘small
business’ sector, which can be risk-averse and not a good proxy for entrepreneur-
ship; rather, attention is devoted to entrepreneurs ‘as important risk-takers, or as
essentially innovators’ (OECD 1997: 152).
A historical lens can be used to remind us of the entrepreneurial initiatives under-
pinning the establishment of what we now readily accept as high cultural institutions.
Examining the ‘process by which elites forged an institutional system embodying their
ideas about the high arts’ is an interest of Paul DiMaggio (1986a: 42). He focuses on
Boston in the nineteenth century: namely on the city’s ‘Brahmins’, and how they
went about creating the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1881) and the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston (1860). ‘Cultural capitalists’ is a term used by DiMaggio (1986a:
43) to denote entrepreneurship as foundational to the creation of institutional high
culture. Boston Brahmins, as an example, are capitalists in the sense that their wealth
came from management of industrial enterprises from which they extracted a profit.
They are cultural capitalists in that they invested some of these profits in the founda-
tion and maintenance of distinctly cultural enterprises; DiMaggio acknowledges
what Pierre Bourdieu labels ‘cultural capital’ (as socially-valued knowledge that can
confer prestige upon those who have mastered them). The BSO and the MFA were
similar innovations in structure:
Each was private, controlled by members of the Brahmin class, and estab-
lished on the corporate model, dependent on private philanthropy and rela-
tively long-range financial planning; each was sparsely staffed and relied for
much of its management on elite volunteers; and each counted among its
founders wealthy men of considerable scholarly or artistic credentials who
were centrally located in Boston’s elite social structure.
(DiMaggio 1986a: 58)
The institutional founding of the V&A, as the Museum of Manufacturers, was
based on the success of the 1851 International Exhibition, which was spear-
headed by the commercial flair of Henry Cole and royal patronage of Prince
Albert. The Museum had a clear didactic purpose of improving the standard of
British designers, inculcating better consumer taste, and providing an educa-
tional resource for members of the working classes. Likewise the Tate Gallery,
as an offshoot of the National Gallery, came to fruition due to the persistent
benevolence of sugar magnate Henry Tate, who desired the nation to have an
institution devoted to British and modern painting and sculpture. Continental
neighbours were points of reference for both museum projects. The importation
of high quality goods from France, at a time of growing mechanization, was
viewed as leading to a decline in the standards of design and production, and
served as an impulse for the Museum of Manufacturers. Not unlike the way the
National Gallery was viewed as the British response to the Louvre, reference to
the Luxembourg Museum in Paris was made in connection with the Tate Gallery.
Both cases, thus, reflected dual needs: the need to address national audiences (i.e.
Cultural entrepreneurship
31
the OECD: ‘What enterpreneurship amounts to in an economy in which the genera-
tion, application and exploitation of distinctive know-how is fast and becoming the
prime source of wealth creation (Leadbetter and Oakley 2001: 17).
Dostları ilə paylaş: