Author: Anderson, Robert O.

Publication Year: 1970

Media Type: Book

Summary:

Abstract:

Examples of effective collaboration between corporations and arts organizations, rare only a decade ago, are now to be found in many parts of the country. But they are not nearly as numerous and widespread as they might be. I believe their increase is inhibited, in part at least, by the persistance of a measure of the mutual misunderstanding and mistrust that once kept the world of organized business and the world of the arts isolated from each other.

Many corporate executives are beginning to appreciate the importance of the arts and the responsibility of business to help support and expand the nation's cultural resources. However, their appreciation is often qualified by a natural caution about venturing into unfamiliar territory to seek alliances with those whose life style appears, at least on the surface, to be not only different from but even antagonistic to their own. On the other hand, many artists regard the corporation as a monolithic, soulless economic structure, dedicated exclusively to profit and, when it employs artists, a ruthless exploiter of talent. They are convinced that the corporate executive is a cultural illiterate who takes a narrowly pragmatic view of business responsibilities to the public. In turn, artists are still regarded by some businessmen as egocentric bohemians, who want a free and prosperous society but appear to be contemptuous of the complex social structures and the individual moral economy needed to achieve and sustain it.

Twenty years ago, the attitude of the artist towards the businessman and the corporation might have had some basis in fact.

Today, practically all the business people who attend the Aspen seminars would unequivocally maintain that corporations have broad social responsibilities extending from responsibility for the welfare of their employees and the communities in which they do business to responsibility for help in solving problems that affect society as a whole.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Private Sector