On Corporatization of the Arts
I am worried about the arts.
Not just in the familiar way we worry during a recession, but in a deeper, more insidious way.
I am wary of the word “industry” in relation to the arts in general, and specifically, its association with non-profit arts organizations.
I’m worried about how we’re shaping culture to fit funders.
I’m worried about the corporatization of the arts.
Professionalization vs. Corporatization
Let me be clear: professionalization in the arts is essential. It means artists get paid. It means sustainable careers, safe working conditions, and accountability. Professionalization is, at its core, about equity. It recognizes that art = work.
Corporatization is different. It’s not about valuing artists, it’s about reshaping art and artists in the image of the corporate world. It’s about metrics over meaning, and it’s showing up everywhere: in language, values, programming, and policies.
More and more, we are reshaping culture to fit funders, not the other way around. We’ve started building institutions not to serve art or community, but to attract investors.
Relevance
The Audacity of Relevance: Critical Conversations on the Future of Arts and Culture by Alex Sarian is very hot with arts leaders across the country right now. Sarian suggests we must embrace a “new business model” and give audiences what they want.
And sure, art should be relevant. But relevant to whom? And on whose timeline?
When “relevance” means chasing the tastes of the majority, we risk erasing marginalized voices. “The audacity of relevance” is also the “audacity of whiteness” and certainly the “audacity of wealth”.
Further, we risk narrowing the field to what is already familiar and profitable. That’s not a “new” business model. That’s capitalism.
Art is not always immediate; it does not always hit right away. Some of the most transformative work was ignored in its time. If we only support what’s trending or legible to the mainstream in real time, we cut off the future before it begins.
Plus, Monoculture is fragile. A healthy arts ecosystem is not a popularity contest. It needs the weird, the small, the slow, and the edgey. It needs multiplicity.
Go Big or Stay Home
The corporatization of the arts shows up in funding structures, too. With ArtsNL’s shift to the Professional Operating Program, many smaller organizations were pushed out of annual funding and into project grants, where they now compete with individual artists.
The project grants budget didn’t grow, but the pool did. This change doesn’t nurture a diverse ecosystem; it rewards scale.
If we continue down this path, we’ll lose the very voices that make the arts matter in the first place.
What Can We Do?
I think we can start by naming it.
Let’s talk about corporatization openly in the community, in grant reports, with our boards, and with our funders. Let them know that we see what’s happening.
We can ask hard questions:
Who benefits from this model?
Who gets left out?
We can support the small, the weird, and the independent. We can buy tickets. We can share the work. We can say their names in rooms they’re not in, better yet, advocate to get them in those rooms.
We can advocate for diverse funding structures. Structures that don’t pit artists against one another.
We can resist the pressure to justify our worth in corporate terms and understand that value and metrics are not synonymous.