This important new book offers an intellectual history of the 'arts council' policy model, identifying and exploring the ideas embedded in the model and actions of intellectuals, philanthropists and wealthy aesthetes in its establishment in the mid-twentieth century. The book examines the history of arts advocacy for national arts policies in the UK, Canada and the USA, offering an interdisciplinary approach that combines social and intellectual history, political philosophy and literary analysis. The book has much to offer academics, cultural policy and management students, artists, arts managers, arts advocates, cultural policymakers and anyone interested in the history and current moment of public arts funding in the West.

Makes an important contribution to cultural policy research by offering new insights into an under-documented history Introduces a significant emphasis on the fundamentally gendered nature of the development of the arts council movement, by including a range of previously unheralded female actors into the narrative Highlights the manner in which powerful groups of cultural elites influenced public policy on arts and culture in a manner that remains embedded in cultural policy and arts funding patterns today

Autorentext

Anna Rosser Upchurch is Lecturer in Cultural Policy at the University of Leeds, UK. After a career in arts management and policy in the United States working for a range of publicly and privately funded organisations, she earned a PhD in cultural policy studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She is co-editor of Humanities in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Utility and Markets (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), with Eleonora Belfiore, and her research interests include the historiography and theory of cultural policy, the history of ideas about the arts and humanities in society, including issues of 'value' and 'impact', and histories of women activists in cultural organisations.

Inhalt
Introduction. What is the 'arts council movement'?.- 1.Philanthropists and Policy Advisors.- 2.The Ideologies of English Intellectualism and of American Philanthropy.- 3.Arts policy during the second world war in the United Kingdom.- 4.The Arts Council of Great Britain: Keynes's Legacy.- 5.The Canadian Clerisy and the Canada Council.- 6.The Local Arts Council Movement in the United States.- Conclusion