Author: Jeffri, Joan

Publication Year: 1981

Media Type: Report

Summary:

As formulated areas of study, arts management and arts law are not yet two decades old. The literature that normally illuminates areas of intellectual pursuit has developed slowly and sporadically in these two fields, partly because of the newness of subject area, and also because arts management and arts law are not strictly intellectual pursuits but instead have their grounding in current application. Precedents from the past may be interesting in and of themselves.

Abstract:

As formulated areas of study, arts management and arts law are not yet two decades old. The literature that normally illuminates areas of intellectual pursuit has developed slowly and sporadically in these two fields, partly because of the newness of subject area, and also because arts management and arts law are not strictly intellectual pursuits but instead have their grounding in current application. Precedents from the past may be interesting in and of themselves.

Surely, the history of the actor-manager in this country, the concepts of droit de suite and droit moral in France, the receipt by our oldest major art museums of the private collections of a few wealthy individuals in the nineteenth century, are topics worthy of pursuit and explication for their own sakes. But it is in the application of such knowledge to existing forums, individuals and institutions in the arts, that they become not only discourses of the mind, but tools - for shaping policy, for relating an institution's past development to its future goals; tools for carving out a more substantial niche for the individual artist in our society; tools for understanding our relationship to Europe, to the Third World, to other societies through their cultural and artistic heritages; tools for advocacy, lobbying, funding, financing and managing the arts.

It is my hope that this journal will devote itself to two major goals within the scope of its more general commmitment to the arts: first, to the encouragement of a body of literature that is relevant, probing, and constructive, which is not to say that it may not be highly critical and controversial, and that, in the encouragement of that body of literature and, second, as part and parcel of it, we encourage excellence of written expression in a field that badly needs articulation.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Community Development