ePrints

Imagining the social impact of museums and galleries: interrogating cultural policy through an empirical study

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Andrew Newman

Downloads

Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to an understanding of how museums and galleries are regulated through an examination of the production and implementation of policy. It concentrates on those aspects that view them as vehicles through which social policy, such as that dealing with social inequality, can be implemented. To do this, it identifies the ways that motivations, behaviours and social outcomes of engagement are imagined by New Public Management-derived policy, and audit and evaluation tools. This is then examined using the results of a study of how visitors consume contemporary visual art galleries in north-east England, UK. The study concludes that the complex nature of engagement cannot be accommodated by policy in its present form and cannot be captured by existing audit and evaluation tools. It suggests that new approaches that acknowledge the roles visitors play in the construction of meanings need to be developed.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Newman A

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: International Journal of Cultural Policy

Year: 2013

Volume: 19

Issue: 1

Pages: 120-137

Print publication date: 18/10/2011

ISSN (print): 1028-6632

ISSN (electronic): 1477-2833

Publisher: Routledge

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2011.625419

DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2011.625419

Altmetrics

Share