From Philanthropy to Funding: The Effects of Corporate & Public Support on American Art Museums PDF

I El.SEVIER Poetics 24 ( 1996) 87- 129 POETICS From philanthropy to funding: The effects of corporate and public support on American art museums*...

I El.SEVIER Poetics 24 ( 1996) 87- 129 POETICS From philanthropy to funding: The effects of corporate and public support on American art museums* Victoria D. Alexander * Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5Xfl, UK Abstract This paper demonstrates that both museums and museum exhibitions change as museums become increasingly supported by institutional funders rather than individual philanthropists. Museums become more attuned to audiences, exhibits, and educational programs. Exhibitions themselves change, but not due to direct pressure by funders. Rather, funders sponsor more of the exhibitions that suit their goals, thereby changing the overall mix of exhibitions. Notably, there has been a broadening effect on museums as corporations and government sponsor exhibition formats that appeal to large audiences, and as corporations sponsor popular exhibitions. Such changes have led to increased conflict within museums. Ironically, the source of the conflict - the increase in numbers of new institutional funders - has also given the most disgruntled group - curators - more leverage to do their jobs. The research relies on interviews, archival data from 30 museums, and analysis of more than 4,000 exhibitions from 15 large American art museums from 1960 to 1986. I. Introduction How have changes in external funding sources affected museum exhibitions? This is a question which has been debated in the museum literature for quite a while (e.g. Netzer, 1978; Feld et al., 1983; DiMaggio, 1986d; Feldstein, 1991; Benedict, 1991), though not much systematic evidence has been brought to bear on the question. This paper seeks to remedy this situation by examining fifteen large American art museums from 1960 to 1986 to gauge the effects of changes in exhibition funding on exhibitions and museums. ,·, I would like to thank Paul DiMaggio, John W. Meyer, W. Richard Scott, Ann Swidler and Vera Zolberg for comments, and the Program on Non-Profit Organizations at Yale University, the American Association of University Women, and the Program on Nonprofit Governance at Indiana University for financial support. ' E-email: [email protected] OJ04-422X/96 /$15.00 © 19% Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved SSD/ 0304-422X(95)00003-8 88 V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 (1996) 87-129 This study argues that funding does affect content, but not in a simple way. Rather, external funding flows through museums, which are formal organizations. In order to understand museum exhibitions - indeed to understand art - we must understand organizational behavior. In a broad sense, then, this study is concerned with organization-environment links. Actors, situations, and events external to the organization - the organization's environment - and organization-environment interactions greatly affect the organization and its output. I contend that the output of museums, exhibitions, is shaped by practical concerns and mundane matters such as financing and budgeting, along with more 'noble' (and legitimating) aesthetic criteria. In order to understand how the funding environment affects museums, it is essential to understand that within museums there is a conflict between different aesthetic visions carried by different organizational actors. Curators, directors, trustees, and other personnel all hold different aesthetic views. Some of these views are explicitly and consciously held and directly acted upon. Other visions, such as that of the financial officer who cancels an exhibition for lack of funds, are implicit or indirect. Moreover, the decisions of external funders also imply aesthetic choices: Funders have goals that shape their giving. Organizational theory sheds some light on environmental effects (such as funder preferences) on organizations and on the management of internal conflicts (over aesthetic choices). Organizational theory suggests that organizations are profoundly shaped by their environments, but organizational theory also suggests that managers attempt to reduce the amount of influence on them (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Resource dependency suggests that those who control crucial resources coerce organizational decision makers to meet their demands. Museums cannot operate on only membership fees and gate receipts; consequently, they are highly dependent on large donors for funds. In order to maintain such funding, museums must please these large donors. One way museums do this, resource dependency predicts, is to conform to the demands of those who supply resources - for example, to organize displays around funder preferences. This is the kind of argument used by those who argue that funding, especially corporate funding, has 'distorted' the goals of museums. External influence does not reduce the role of internal decision makers. Donors make general demands on museums - for art that appeals to a broad audience, that is scholarly or whatever - and museums look for possibilities, from new and old art, to meet these demands. Further, institutional theory in organizations suggests that managers respond to actors who control legitimacy in addition to those who control resources (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Meyer and Scott, 1992). Since museums must appear legitimate not only to funders but to other important judges such as critics and reviewers, the resource dependency effect is attenuated. Thus, the sensibilities of curators and other arts professionals certainly serve to translate and channel donor desires. But more than that, museum people use the opportunities posed by the array of funders to actually create new solutions: new definitions of art, new types of exhibitions, and different roles for museums.  V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 (1996) 87-129 89 Funders can affect exhibitions, but in museums this is not the passive process implied by resource dependency theory. On the contrary, this new funding has given museum decision makers opportunities to rewrite museum missions, to change the museum's role in the community, and to establish new exhibition formats and subjects. Museum decision makers must contend with the demands made by funders and at the same time maintain the museum's vitality without compromising their vision of its integrity. Their ability to find creative resolutions to the problems brought about by new funding patterns affects both the content of exhibitions and aesthetic definitions. Curators make innovative aesthetic choices, incorporating new ideas of three aspects of art: ( l) New ideas of what art is, (2) new ideas of what scholarly questions can be addressed to an existing, recognized body of art, and (3) new ideas of what existing art has been ignored or what unrecognized or undervalued art should be elevated into the canon of high art. Curators use these innovations to resolve the conflicting interests of the different funders, and at the same time they use the innovations to reclaim autonomy they might otherwise lose to external constituents. In sum, organizations literature suggests that (I) museums become externally oriented, mainly to funders, as funds become scarce, or as museum managers implement business plans. (2) As museums focus on external funders, they orient their activities to please funders in order to assure continued income. However, (3) museums will continue to try to please more traditional judges of art museums to maintain their legitimacy. And (4), various coalitions in museums compete with each other in an attempt to retain their autonomy. In doing so, directors, curators, and other museum actors innovate. The possibility of innovation helps account for change in art worlds. 2. Museums Museums are an important component in the fine-arts distribution system. In order to understand art, we must understand how museums, and museum exhibits, operate. Museum exhibitions are the primary way in which the public experiences art. Moreover, art exhibitions help shape trends and fashions in the high art world. Museums have a central place in defining art. Objects displayed in museums carry the label of 'art', while similar objects not exhibited are often considered 'craft', 'decoration', or 'non-art' (Becker, 1982). As many scholars have noted (Danto, 1987; Williams, 1981; Meyer, 1979), objects must be labeled 'art' in order for observers to recognize and interpret them as art. The artistic canon, by definition, includes only validated art. Given that museum exhibitions are an important aspect in building and maintaining the legitimacy of artists and artistic styles, prevailing definitions of art are an outcome of every day organizational processes. Museums act as gatekeepers by filtering cultural objects as they enter the museum's system (Hirsch, 1972). There is a good deal of art and potential art 'out there', in galleries, private collections, attics, and the storerooms of other museums. There are new forms of creative expression, whose status will be fundamentally 90 V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 ( 1996) 87-129 changed if they are considered 'art' by museums. There are currently- and histori- cally-produced creative forms that have, until recently, not been considered art. 'Crafts', 'decoration', 'artifacts' and 'everyday objects' can be called up by museums to fill a role in high art. Artists from traditionally disenfranchised groups ( women and minority artists, masters from third-world countries) or so-called 'secondary artists' can be rediscovered and called 'great' and 'unjustly ignored'. These issues are implicitly addressed each time a curator mounts an exhibition. Museums, along with other gatekeeping organizations and professionals, define high art in the process of selecting new acquisitions and mounting exhibitions. This role of museums in demarcating the limits of high art provides a backdrop to the issues examined in this research. Museums are strategic organizations to study, given a concern with the aesthetic ramifications of the art distribution system. Museums have recently experienced a dramatic shift in their funding environment. Consequently, the effects of the environment on certain outcomes, namely art exhibitions, should be relatively easy to trace. 2.1. Changes in funding Traditional funders of the arts were individual patrons, wealthy men and women who collected paintings and sculpture themselves and who often ran museums. Currently, arts funding is drawn from a wider variety of sources (DiMaggio, 1986a). Funders present museums with a wealth of conflicting goals. The NEA was established in 1965. It provides museums with financial help for programs and exhibits, guided by the principles of making art available to more people and helping museums better serve the citizens of the United States. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) was established at the same time. Though less important to museums than the NEA, the NEH sometimes underwrites exhibi- tions with a humanistic orientation. State arts councils are a direct outgrowth of the NEA. With the important exception of the New York State Council on the Arts (upon which the NEA was modelled), nearly all the state arts councils were founded to take advantage of federal block grants offered to states with arts councils (DiMaggio, 1991b: 218). The state arts councils have an independent effect on museums, and their budgets are made up of a combination of federal monies and funds designated by the state legislature. 1 1 Other governmental agencies play a role in the arts. For example, the Institute of Museum Services (IMS) makes direct grants to museums for operating expenses (Oliver, 1991). Other agencies have sometimes made direct grants, such as the Comprehensive Education and Training Act (CETA) which was eliminated in the early 1980s (DiMaggio, 1986b, 1991b). Most programs offering, in one way or another, direct government support of museums were eliminated under Reagan, leaving only the NEA, NEH, and the IMS as major funders. Some resurgence of decentralized funding has occurred under Clinton. From a different perspective, federal tax policy which encourages cultural philanthropy overshadows direct grants as a source of museum funds (Feld et al., 1983).  V.D. Alexander/ Poetic.r 24 ( /996) 87-129 91 Corporations have sponsored the arts for a long time (Allen, 1983; Martorella, 1992: ch. 2); however, it was not until the mid-sixties that corporations began to fund the arts in notable amounts (Porter, 1981). The New York Board of Trade founded an Arts Advisory Council in 1965, and the national Business Committee for the Arts was established in 1967. Corporate leaders began to believe that "culture is the business of business" (Gingrich, 1969). They also came to recognize that cultural philanthropy is often a good way to improve corporate reputations (Galas- kiewicz, 1985; Useem, 1985). Arts funding "provides an image for a corporation as sensitive and innovative instead of as a heartless, bottom-line company" (Thomas, quoted in McGuigan et al., 1985). Though corporate and government funders were new on the scene, they rapidly became essential: Corporate patronage for the arts of all kinds (including museums, dance, theater, and other arts) has increased from approximately $22 million in 1965 to $150 million in 1975 (McLellan, quoted in Meyer, 1979: 85). In 1992, 11.8 percent of the $5.92 billion given by corporations, almost $700 million, was given to culture and the arts (American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel, I 994: 74, 77). Corporate outlays for all philanthropic giving has grown enormously since the early 1960s. While corporate giving remained relatively constant (adjusting for inflation) through the early 70s at 3 to 3.8 billions of 1993 dollars, total corporate philanthropy starts to climb around 1975, doubling to a peak of over 7.14 billions of 1993 dollars, and declines to $5.92 in 1993 (American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel, 1994: 74). About 11 to 12 percent of that amount goes to visual arts, and 24 percent of the proportion given to visual arts goes to museums ( Glennon, 1988). The initial appropriation to the NEA ·in 1966 was a modest $1.8 million, but the budget increased to just over $150 million by 1990 (National Endowment for the Arts, 1990), though in real dollars, appropriations have decreased somewhat since the late 1970s, largely due to Reagan instituted cuts (DiMaggio, 1986b). Foundations have played a slightly different role in museums than government and corporate funding, though foundations are institutional funders along with these other two types of donors. Foundations first became important to museums in the 1920s (DiMaggio, 1991c), went through a period of declining influence, and became bigger players in the arts in the 1950s (DiMaggio, 1986c). Odendahl ( 1987b: 36) reports that in 1984 foundations gave 761 grants in the category 'art and architec- ture'. These grants totalled over $50 million which was 3.1 percent of the total foundation giving in all categories. Despite this large contribution in the cultural arena, foundations have played a lesser role in the transformation of museums during the time under study than corporations and government. The situation of corporate and government sponsorship of museums is quite a change from the status quo early in this century. Then, individual philanthropists were the primary supporters of museums. Most museums were founded by individ- ual collectors (e.g. DiMaggio, 1982 a,b; Lynes, 1973), and even museums with municipal funding received that assistance as a result of pressure from the city's wealthy (Tompkins, 1970). Since founders usually took a great interest in the daily activities of their organizations, most early museums reflected the interests of these wealthy patrons, and of upper-class culture in general (Lilla and Frank, 1988). 92 V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 (1996) 87-129 During the first sixty or seventy years of this century, museums were supported by wealthy philanthropists. But starting in the mid-sixties, museums became reliant on a mix of institutional funders. The difference between philanthropy and funding indicates fundamental differences in the basic attitudes of the various donor groups. When museums rely on institutional funders, rather than on casual funding by wealthy individuals (or for that matter, on market arrangements), their operations are affected. 2.2. Overview of funders' goals Funders affect museums because their sponsorship goals differ from those of traditional philanthropists. To oversimplify, government agencies stress wide public enjoyment and corporations are interested in public relations, while traditional patrons do not have goals that include such audiences. Corporations have come to believe that cultural philanthropy is a good way to improve corporate reputations - a highbrow form of advertising. To achieve this goal, corporations want to sponsor exhibits that appeal to large, middle-class audiences. Further, both government and corporations want to fund art that is new and exciting, yet corporations shun art that is difficult to understand, and both (now) avoid art that is particularly controversial. Government panels, made up of museum curators, are caught between their profes- sional, curatorial tastes (often for esoteric art), and their public mission, which requires that they attend to projected attendance figures and consider the likelihood that the museum will be able to raise matching funds for the show (e.g. from corporations who focus on audience-appeal). Political goals, then, require that government agencies pay attention to the potential of a show to draw large-middle class audiences, as corporations do. But government agencies must also attend to the art scholarship in a show, which is not a requirement for corporate funders. Traditional patrons are interested in the art itself. They are connoisseurs and collectors who are interested in objects - or the status or monetary value that can be derived from objects. Collectors often talk about their art acquisitions in terms of their love of beauty rather than discussing the investment potential of the object. However, market value is also important to many art owners. Moreover, traditional patrons are uninterested in attracting broad audiences. Indeed, individual wealthy philanthropists prefer smaller, narrower exhibitions, both in terms of the safety of objects they may have personally lent to the museum, and because they are interested in gaining status as a connoisseur of rare or esoteric works. As they display their wealth and status to small, elite circles, their 'target audience' may be their own social set. The main point here is that funders have goals that shape their giving. The research question is how these goals are mediated by museum personnel - who also have goals of their own. These goals - for broad public access, on the one hand, and for scholarly, esoteric exhibitions, on the other - often conflict; thus, pressures from funders, in concert with pressures from museum curators for scholarly, prestigious shows, create problems for museum managers. Organizational theory suggests that museums will attempt to retain autonomy from the pressures from their  V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 ( 1996) 87-129 93 funders. However, funder influence is not always so bald. For example, funders affect museums whether or not their grants come 'with strings attached'. Often donors give 'complete freedom' to the museums' curators in the funding contract, but fund only those museums that seem to the donors to have exciting, interesting programs. This means that, though individual exhibitions might not change, the overall mix of exhibitions might change as funders sponsor only certain types of exhibition among all those available. If funders disproportionately prefer particular types of exhibitions, those types of exhibitions may become more common in museums. In addition, museum decision makers must contend with the demands made by funders and at the same time maintain the museum's vitality without compromising their vision of its integrity. Their ability to find creative resolutions to the problems brought about by new funding patterns affects both the content of exhibitions and aesthetic definitions. According to traditional views, museums are assumed to be in the business of collecting, conserving, displaying and teaching about great art. They are not in the entertainment business nor are they supposed to focus on 'lowbrow' or 'popular' culture. Though these views are being challenged, most museums make an effort to keep their highbrow legitimacy. 3. Data sources This study relies mainly on data collected from annual reports of 30 museums, including a data set with information on 4026 exhibitions from 15 museums. It is supplemented by interviews with a small sample of museum employees. 3. I. Annual reports The basic research design for this study includes a longitudinal analysis of exhibitions mounted by large museums since 1960. In this part of the research, I employed a comprehensive sample of the 36 largest American art museums, based on their 1978 operating expenditures (see the Appendix). These are museums for which, in 1978, operating expenses were approximately $1 million or more. To build the data set, I developed a 'large museum universe' by taking the top 30 museums ranked by the institution's annual expenses for museum-related items in 1978. Operating expenses were taken from the 1978 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Museum Universe Study. Five of these museums were excluded because they were not suited to the sample. 2 To this list of 25, I added six museums for which museum expense was missing, but which listed total expendi- tures for 1978 (including expenses for other activities such as an art school or 2 The five museums are the Carnegie Institute, Henry Francis Dupont Winterthur Museum, the International Museum of Photography, The Frick Museum and the Freer Gallery of Art (Smithsonian Institution). 94 V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 ( /996) 87-129 Table I Museums studied (Annual Reports available - even years only) Albright Knox Museum ( 1960-84) Art Institute of Chicago ( 1960-86) Baltimore Museum of Art (1970-74) Brooklyn Museum ( I 960- 72, 80-84) Cincinnati Art Museum (1960-82) Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute ( 1978-86) Cleveland Museum ( 1960-80, 84-86) Dallas Museum of Art ( 1976-86) Denver Art Museum (1978-86) Detroit Institute of Art ( 1960-86) Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (I 976-82); (plus, California Palace of the Legion of Honor [1960-66) and DeYoung Museum [1972-86)) William Hayes Fogg Art Museum ( 1966-78) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1978-86) Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1966-80) Metropolitan Museum of Art ( 1960-86) Minneapolis Institute of Art ( 1976-86) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ( 1966-84) Museum of Fine Arts, Houston ( 1970-86) Museum of Modem Art ( 1960-86) National Gallery (1966-84) Nelson-Atkins Museum ( 1986) North Carolina Museum ( 1962-74) Philadelphia Museum of Art (1960-84) Saint Louis Art Museum ( I 960- 78, 84-86) Toledo Museum of Art (1960, 64, 68-86) Wadsworth Atheneum (1960-86) Walters Art Gallery ( 1976-78) Whitney Museum ( 1960-74, 78-82) Worcester Art Museum ( 1960, 78-82) Yale Art Gallery ( 1960, 66- 78, 82-86) library), of $1 million or greater. 3 In addition, I added the J. Paul Getty Museum, which was missing both museum and total expenses, but which is a major museum. (Other museums with both variables missing tended to be ~mall, obscure museums.) Several museums were missing altogether from the survey, and these museums were also added to the universe. These were the National Gallery, the Los Angeles 3 A one million cut-off was chosen because most museums in the top 30 had total expenditures either exceeding or approximating that amount. In addition to the six museums added to the large museum universe, eight additional museums fit the criteria of total expenditures greater than or equal to $1,000,000. These organizations were excluded for several reasons, the most common reason was that the organization was an art academy (art school) with an associated museum (rather than vice-versa), so a great deal of the operating budget probably went to the school rather than the museum.  V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 (1996) 87-129 95 County Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Kimbell Museum. This made a total of 36 major museums in the universe. To collect infonnation on museums and exhibitions, I consulted annual reports of museums at the Thomas J. Watson library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago. No annual reports were available for six of the museums, 4 so archival research relies on annual reports of 30 museums. A smaller quantitative data set (based on 4026 exhibitions in 15 museums) includes only those museums for which the most complete infonnation was available (see Table I). There are many advantages to building a data set from scratch from archival materials. Although the fonnat of annual reports varies by museum and by year, these reports all provide similar information, which I extracted and coded. As with all documentary source material, annual reports reflect the concerns of museums at the time they were written. In addition, I read every annual report in my sample before I coded it. Thus I have a great deal of textured, qualitative data on changes in museums, as well as systematic, quantitative infonnation. The main advantage of coding museum publications, however, is that it allows longitudinal analysis. I began the analysis with 1960 - five years before the advent of federal funding and major corporate sponsorship of the arts - and collected data for even years from 1960 to 1986. That works out to be 14 time points for each museum. Significantly, the data set ends before the current crisis in federal arts funding which started with the Andres Serrano and Mapplethorpe controversies (see Benedict, 1991; Dubin, 1992). These controversies are not part of the research, but they render important and timely questions of the effects of funding on exhibitions. I coded each exhibition mounted by my sample museums on detailed infonnation on funders and into categories for artistic style and fonnat. I noted whether the exhibition was historically or thematically organized, whether it was a travelling exhibition, and whether it was a large-scale 'blockbuster'. More detail on the coding is presented along with the research findings. 3.2. In-depth interviews with museum personnel In addition to the archival work, I conducted in-depth, unstructured interviews to learn how museum personnel understand and react to their funding environment. I interviewed twelve people from eight northeastern museums. The shortest of the interviews was one half-hour, the longest, about three hours. Most were about an hour long. The sample was not random: I wrote people whom I knew through personal contacts. However, I did try to interview people from a range of occupa- tions and types of museums: I interviewed one director-curator from a small, rural, modern art museum; three directors, two curators, two associate curators, and one educator from five large, urban, general-collection museums; and one director and 4 Walker Art Center, New Orleans Museum of Art, Joslyn Art Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Kimbell Museum. 96 V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 ( 1996) 87-129 two educators from two university museums. 5 The interviews were conducted in 1986. In keeping with the spirit of grounded theory, I did not develop a formal questionnaire. Instead, I addressed several sets of questions concerning changes in art funding in my interviews. These questions were open-ended to allow the respondents a great deal of freedom in answering. I focused on current issues ( 1986) and only occasionally relied on respondents' recall of the past. I asked museum personnel their opinions of corporate and government funders and what the different types of funders look for in exhibitions and demand from museums. I asked about the ramifications of changes from individual to collective funders, and how museum staffs manage in light of the changes. I asked about museum missions, specifically about broadening audiences and building education programs. Finally, I asked about a concern that is routinely expressed in art circles: Are the instrumental interests of institutional funders hurting rather than helping the arts? 4. Findings I will first briefly review museum personnel's perceptions of the goals of each funder type. These perceptions appear to be accurate, in that they correspond with research done on each type of funder. Museum evaluation of the funder, however, varies by the position of the museum member - director, curator, or educator - and indicates some degree of conflict in the museum. I will then examine the interaction of funding on the number of exhibitions and on museum programs, using both quantitative and interview data. I will then present quantitative evidence, bolstered by the archival research, on the relationship between museum funding and the style and format of museum exhibitions. 4.1. Perceptions of the funding process Here, I use the interview material to develop a sense of how funding is experienced inside the museum by museum personnel. By and large, these percep- tions correlate well with findings of other researchers on the goals of various funder groups. Museum people report that corporate and federal funders have very different goals for their giving, both from each other and from individual philanthropists. Below, I report museum perceptions of corporations, the government entities, foundations, and individual donors. I interviewed a variety of museum decision 5 Each of these factors - the museum's size, its location, whether it is a specialist or generalist - combine with the individual's staff position to shape each respondent's perspective on the art scene. Other important factors include the size of the museum's endowment, its membership (large or small; wealthy or not), and how many other museums (i.e. competitors) are located in the vicinity.  V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 ( 1996) 87-129 97 makers, and occasionally different types of museum personnel - directors, curators, or educators - did not agree with one another. This disagreement and conflict is one topic of this paper. When I talk about the attitudes of 'museum personnel', I mean that the three groups tended to agree, and when I use a specific category of personnel, e.g. 'curator', I mean that the attitude is more typical of just that group. Of course, there is not an exact correspondence between funders' goals and the perception of these goals by museum personnel. Indeed, respondents' answers reflect the museum's own perspective on business, government, and individual philanthropy. It is important to recognize, however, that this 'museum-eye view' provides valuable insights into the beliefs that govern museum behavior. Moreover, museums' perceptions of donor goals are more important than the funders' actual goals in shaping museum policy, since organizational decision makers act upon their 'enactments' of the environment (Weick, 1979). Goals of individual elites. As seen by museum personnel, traditional patrons are interested in art itself and sometimes in art scholarship. Elite individuals may know a great deal about art, and may not care about attracting audiences. Some elite individuals are seen as idiosyncratic, but also educable. Thus, elite individuals are seen to care about art and to be uninterested in the type of popularizing efforts corporations and government have brought to museums. Further, unlike the govern- ment and corporate donors, individual elites are not required to pay attention to public issues and concerns, and unlike government or foundation (family or corporate) donors, they need not attend to accounting procedures. Museum people - directors, curators and educators - speak well of wealthy patrons. Museum people highlight the selfless devotion of such patrons to the museum, and point out that they are true 'art lovers'. Often museums have groups called the 'Director's Circle' or 'Collectors Forum' - an arena where patrons learn about art history (and what the museum wants by way of gifts) over lunch or cocktails with the museum director and staff. Museum personnel seem to view individual philanthropists as malleable, amateur art historians. One educator, how- ever, noted their "snobby", anti-populist sentiments. The high esteem given to museums' individual patrons was evident in curators' comments, though some curators complained about mounting exhibitions of donor collections. Museums mount exhibitions of art owned by their wealthy patrons and trustees. Some curators feel that these exhibits can be inferior because the organizer must choose objects from an individual collection that is usually uneven and always limited. Happy collectors are generous collectors, however, and many museum people are willing to sacrifice a bit of scholarship in exchange for garnering some fine art objects. Academic research suggests that individual collectors are indeed interested in art, or in the prestige associated with the art, both of which elicit connoisseurship (Odendahl, 1990; Robinson, 1987; Moulin, 1987). Academic researchers highlight the elite's pursuit of status honor over their 'selfless' interest in art, however (Balfe and Cassilly, 1993; Bourdieu, 1984; see also Weber, 1946; Veblin, 1934). Re- searchers also point out that financial incentives are important to individual philan- thropists (Odendahl, 1987a; Moulin, 1987). Wealthy donors have drastically changed their patterns of giving art as tax laws change (Molotsky, 1993), and their art work 98 V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 (1996) 87-129 can vastly appreciate in value after it is exhibited, facts which museum people do not mention. 6 On the contrary, museum people highlighted the accord that exists between the goals of individual elites and the goals of museums. Goals of corporations: As seen by museum personnel, corporations generally fund art as a public relations gambit. In this regard, corporations would be likely to sponsor art that has a wide public appeal. Corporations are likely to be particularly interested in audiences who consume corporate products and provide resources (including legitimacy), rather than art per se. The goal of corporations, as perceived by museum personnel, is public relations: to enhance the corporation's reputation. There was no dispute on this point. However, the interpretation of corporate donations and the attribution of goodwill to corporate actors varies greatly with museum position. Corporate funding of the arts is a great locus of controversy in museums. Curators often say, with distaste, that corporations are only interested in "what's in it for them". They don't want good art, one curator asserts, rather they want to "dazzle the eye". Directors, on the other hand, point out the large amount of money corporations have donated to museums, and argue that these donations have led to increased activity and vitality in museums. Directors believe that corporate dollars are indispensable to museums. Curators would love to dispense with corporate support, though they realize this would be difficult today. A director/curator, who held opinions from both camps, characterized herself as a 'purist' (meaning she did not believe that museums should accept corporate funding). I asked her how one could go about running a museum with no corporate support. She answered, "you can't". Research shows that 'corporate self-interest' is the overriding reason corporations cite for funding art (Useem, 19817; Useem and Kutner, 1986), and that corporations are in fact focussed on audiences (Porter, 1981). Corporations are not specifically interested in art scholarship, but neither do they want museums to dispense with scholarship entirely: Part of the reason corporations fund museums is to be associated with the legitimating influence of high art (Balfe, 1987). Curators' fears about corporate art are partially justified by Martorella's (1990) study of corporate art collections. She shows that though some corporate collections are meticulously curated, corporations on the whole tend to be conservative in their collecting and to prefer more easily understood artworks. Goals of government agencies: As seen by museum personnel, the goals of the federal arts agency, the NEA, are internally inconsistent: the written goals, to bring 6 Collectors may exhibit their art work for 'marketing' reasons, both in the nineteenth century (Zolberg, 1974), and today, as in the recent Matisse show where works from the exhibition were withdrawn to be sold at auction. Several curators mentioned the 'ethical dilemmas' in exhibiting works by living artists, as such exhibitions increase the value of the artists' ouvres, including work which may be in the collections of museum trustees (even if those particular works are not exhibited), though the curators did not draw an explicit (or even an implicit) connection between such shows and desires of trustees for such exhibitions or trustee pressures for them. In addition to the advantages of exhibiting a work to increase its marketability, patrons may exhibit their art works for other returns, such as being relieved of storage or conservation costs for the piece.  V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 (1996) 87-129 99 art into the public sphere, and the professional, curatorial goals of the individuals who distribute endowment funds are at odds. In terms of their public missions, the NEA is interested in broad audiences, as are corporations. The NEA, unlike corporations, is explicitly interested in scholarship and art history, and may favor art that seems particularly exciting to curators, as the grants-making panels are made up of arts professionals. Museum personnel like the NEA, though some conservative respondents suggested that big government, which includes arts funding, is wrong. Museum personnel saw state agencies as particularly interested in audiences and accessibility, though not ignoring art-historical concerns. There was very little conflict in museums over government funding. That government agencies are interested in art scholarship seems to mitigate government's interest in audiences. Research on government funding of the arts shows the tension between peer-re- view panels and public goods (Galligan, 1993; Levitt, 1991; Cummings, 1991). Interestingly, DiMaggio (1991 b) argues that the distinction between federal and state arts agencies (federal being particularly interested in 'excellence and quality' and state in 'access, diversity and equality') is a stereotype. He demonstrates that both types of agencies face similar constraints and must meet both artistic and public goals. Goals of foundations: Museum personnel, along with academic researchers, have fewer and weaker impressions of the giving goals of foundations. Only one curator mentioned foundation support of museums. This is similar to the situation in academic research; DiMaggio ( 1986) points out the surprising paucity of research on foundation arts support. DiMaggio argues that there are two distinct groups of foundations that support art. First is the very small, but well-publicized national foundations, big names such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford or the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These foundations have been quite visible in arts funding, with large, coherent programs. Second, there is a very large group of smaller, local foundations. These local foundations do not have well-defined arts programs and tend to "reinforce aesthetic conservatism" though their giving. 4.2. Comparison of individual and institutional funders It is perhaps useful to note that institutional funders do not calculate, formally or statistically, a relationship between the number of visitors to museums and their contribution level. A corporation does not plan to give $100,000 to an exhibition that will attract 500,000 visitors, but only $50,000 to one attracting 250,000 people. Rather, attention to such factors as possible attendance reflects the basic outlook of the funder: Government and corporations value a broad audience. The upper-class patron does not. 5. Museum missions 5.1. Number of exhibitions Over the 26 years of the study, 1960 to 1986, the biggest change in museums has been a dramatic increase in activity. The average number of exhibits per museum 100 V.D. Alexander/ Poetics 24 ( 1996) 87-129 Table 2 Number of exhibitions, number of funded exhibitions, number of funded exhibitions by type of funder, and number of exhibitions with multiple funders (average per museum) Year Average number of exhibitions per museum Total Funded Funded by Multiple N funders Museums b Ind. Corp. Gov. Found. (Philanthropy period) 1960 17.0 1.92 1.46 0.15 0.00 0.31 0.00 13 1962 17.5 1.64 1.36 0.09 0.00 0.27 0.09 II 1964 15.9 1.85 1.62 0.15 0.00 0.08 0.00 13 1966 17.5 3.14 1.71 0.14 O.D7 0.57 O.D7 14 (Transition periodf # 1968 19.6 2.13 1.80 0.20 0.06 0.27 0.06 15 1970 20.5 2.00 1.60 0.40 0.13 0.13 0.20 15 1972 26.1 3.06 1.60 0.66 0.60 0.60 0.33 15 (Funding periodf 1974 24.0 5.29 2.57 1.29 2.28 0.14 0.93 14 1976 24.8 5.77 1.31 0.62 3.00 1.54 0.54 13 1978 24.3 7.57 1.71 1.43 4.64 2.14 1.78 14 1980 23.8 7.08 2.15 3.00 3.46 0.77 1.85 13 1982 26.3 8.67 2.75 4.08 3.50 2.25 2.83 12 1984 23.5 8.69 2.69 4.38 3.15 2.00 2.62 13 1986 27.4 8.11 2.89 4.67 2.89 2.78 3.44 9 #p