By Erwin Dekker and Valeria Morea, authors of Realizing the Values of Art

It took surprisingly long before economists started analyzing the arts as an industry. William Baumol and William Bowen led the way around 1970 with their study of the performing arts which became famous for the so-called cost disease. The arts industry was considered to be a sluggish economic sector, in need of structural support from wealthy patrons, or better, generous and just governments. Since 2000, the perception of the arts has radically changed. Reinvented as creative industries, they are now believed to be an engine of economic growth and a fountain of positive innovation spillovers for the knowledge economy.

Around the same time the arts became central in debates about the future of Western societies. During the heights of multiculturalism in the 1990s the arts were assigned the role of fostering social inclusion and alleviating social conflicts. More recently the arts have been claimed to foster inclusivity, diversity, and provide a voice to marginalized groups. In coming to terms with their colonial pasts, many countries’ artistic heritage has undergone intense scrutiny, and art of the present is believed to have the ability to correct historical injustices.

These shifts have been accompanied by a new social engagement of artists. Art for art’s sake has become a minority position. The art world has led the way in efforts to decolonize museums, has partnered with environmentalists and engineers to imagine a more sustainable future, has been a prominent voice and target of movements like #MeToo. One does not have to have to fully embrace the fashionable idea of artivism to realize that the days of postmodern irony and dreams of full artistic autonomy are over. Artists now imagine alternative futures and hope to bring about social, political, and economic change.

These transformations were accompanied by a widespread effort to measure the social and economic impact of the arts. Academics, non-profit organizations, and policymakers have sought to quantify the social and economic ‘impact’ of cultural festivals, the return on investments in arts infrastructure, and the benefits of city-branding. A pet-industry has emerged for academics and consultants who offer tools to assess the social and economic impact of the arts, boosted by major policy organizations such as NESTA in Britain which opened a Policy and Evidence Centre for the Creative Industries in 2018. And philanthropic organizations have followed suit. The general direction of these developments should be welcomed. It is clear to nearly everyone that the arts should have impacts beyond the aesthetic domain.

But how do we make this happen, and should the desired impacts be set by governments and patrons? The measurements and the attention to the social and economic impact of the arts risk reducing the arts to an instrument. Do you want urban regeneration? Send some artists as pioneers. A more innovative economy? Invest in the creative industries. A more diverse society? You guessed it. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging the broader impacts of the arts, but it is mistaken to believe that the primary value of the arts lies in their spill-over effects.

The primary contribution of the arts lies in the cultural sphere, in the aesthetic, contemplative, playful, reflective, and inspirational values which are realized through them. For instance, transcendental values such as beauty and wonder, or social values such as identity, and community, even economic values such as dynamism and meaningful work. The values that artists and audiences seek to realize are not uniform and often transcend the private sphere. But these values, not the spill-over effects, are primary. These values emerge from the intentions of the actors in cultural civil society. This cultural civil society consists of the many circles, communities, and the rich associational life around the arts. Although it partially overlaps with prestigious art markets and superstar museums and heritage-sites, its foundations lie in (amateur) practices, of a wide variety of practitioners, creators, enthusiasts, critics, fans, and teachers who seek to realize meaning through and around art.

It is their intentions which shape which values are realized through art. A good evaluation of the vibrancy of the arts should be rooted in these intentions, rather than in economic or other policy standards. The fact that artists and audiences seek to realize more than income or utility is precisely what lies at the core of the arts. Actors in cultural civil society explore new, evolving values, embark on aesthetic and social experiments, and imagine different futures, and that is precisely what makes the arts an important element of a democratic and free society.

The renewed engagement of artists in recent years has shown that this can lead to fundamental conflicts of values. In the United States the arts and humanities are involved in what some have called the culture wars. The war metaphor suggests that when one of the groups succeeds in realizing their values, the other must by necessity lose. In this book, we disagree and explore how social practices around the arts, even when they seek to realize antagonistic political values, can co-exist peacefully in cultural civil society.

This entails a radically different perspective on the role of public policy. In the dominant perspective the state supports artistic activities, because they generate positive social and economic spill-overs. We suggest, instead, that the state should restrict itself to establishing a framework in which a diverse set of social practices around the arts can co-exist, and in which minority rights of association and expression are respected and protected. In other words, a neutral framework in which cultural civil society can flourish.

Adapted from Realizing the Values of Art

Erwin Dekker is Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has previously published Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) and the Rise of Economic Expertise (2021) and The Viennese Students of Civilization (2016), as well as the edited volume Governing Markets as Knowledge Commons (2021).

Valeria Morea is Assistant Professor in the Department of Arts and Culture Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She has recently edited the volume Cultural Commons and Urban Dynamics (2020), published by Springer. Her research explores the role and values of public art in urban settings.