Art Museums and Contradicting Ecologies
Worldviews and Boundary Work
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11576/ao-6029Keywords:
cultural organizations, Sociology of art, evaluation, quantification, museum, boundary work, boundary object, cultural politicsAbstract
Navigating a complex social ecology, art museums face multiple and contradicting demands. This article contributes, first, to a deeper understanding of cultural organizations’ practices, and does so by taking their worldviews into consideration. Based on an interview study with museum professionals in Germany and Austria, I reconstruct museum professionals’ understanding of their world to relate specific strategies with professionals’ specific assumptions about art organizational publics like experts, visitors, politicians, sponsors and journalists. Second, I apply concepts from the sociology of the arts, sociology of (scientific) knowledge and organizational studies to grasp the role of organizations and professionals for the autonomy of art. I show how museums function as filters and translators across symbolic boundaries between art and other social domains. Conducting this boundary work, museums produce fine-tuned information and products to meet contradicting demands and, simultaneously, protect art-specific criteria. These findings shed a new light on cultural fields and coping strategies regarding pressures from hostile worlds.
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Copyright (c) 2023 Paul Buckermann

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