Mark Rectanus: Reclaiming the arts from corporate influence (ep373)
“In many cases, corporations are using [the museum’s cultural capital] to reaffirm their status in a local community... Artists are increasingly concerned about the context in which their work is displayed and also the values of the museum and the sponsor.””
In this episode, we revisit our past conversation with Mark Rectanus, a University Professor of German Studies (Emeritus) in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University. His publications include research on the German publishing industry, the book and electronic media, contemporary German literature, corporate sponsorships, cultural politics, museum studies, and contemporary art. His most recent book is Museums Inside Out: Artist Collaborations and New Exhibition Ecologies.
Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include the influence of corporate funding on art and culture, what it might mean to decolonize museums in spite of many of their troubled pasts, how artist-activists have been shifting the politics of art from within, and more.
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Artistic credits:
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Johanna Warren
Episode references:
Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships, a book by Mark Rectanus
Museums Inside Out: Artist Collaborations and New Exhibition Ecologies, a book by Mark Rectanus
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Transcript:
Note: Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Mark Rectanus: I started looking at museums when I was growing up and visiting a lot of museums with my mother. My aunt took some trips to New York and a trip to Europe and [I] became interested in museums. Then it was somewhat of a circuitous route.
When I was in graduate school, I was studying literature, publishing, and media and was somewhat interested in art and also saw how some publishers were using art. Initially, my research was not focused on museums. It was dealing more with the publishing industry, but also had this ongoing interest in artwork. So I continued to develop that interest.
Kamea Chayne: The description of Culture Inc. starts off with the following: “Photographer Annie Leibovitz collaborates with American Express on a portrait exhibition. Absolut Vodka engages artists for their advertisements. Philip Morris mounts an Arts Against Hunger campaign in partnership with prominent museums. Is it art or PR? And where is the line that separates the artistic from the corporate?”
This is a really intriguing question that I hadn't really thought about before because this form of PR feels much more discreet compared to other forms of more direct types of marketing, through sponsored advertisements. Can you give us an introduction to how corporations have been infiltrating the art space? Has this always been the case, or is it a relatively new phenomenon?
Mark Rectanus: There have always been forms of patronage. Going back centuries, patrons have traditionally supported artists and paid artists to develop artworks. You can go back to the church sponsoring artwork. [And] then over the course of the late 19th and 20th century, art [began to become] supported by large philanthropic organizations, but mainly private individuals in the United States and in Europe, in the UK. Sponsorship really didn't come into its own, so to speak, until after World War II, [and] I would say probably more so in the 1960s.
There has been a trajectory of sponsorships, starting out with tobacco companies. For example, Philip Morris—[which later] changed their name later to Altria, but most people knew their cigarette brand as Philip Morris—in the 70s, were sponsoring lots of artwork and museum exhibitions. Then later, came Big Oil sponsoring artwork. [More] recently, pharmaceutical companies and banks [too]. The question about why [companies] sponsor art and culture has to do with marketing as a way to [access] audiences that companies wouldn't normally be able to.
In a museum context or cultural context, frequently this is called image transfer. In other words, the corporate sponsor wants to be able to share the image of the institution of the museum that they're supporting. With tobacco [corporate] sponsorship, [it is] more problematic. [There were] a lot of protests [against] Big Tobacco. Then, as I said, Big Oil was [next]. There have been a lot of protests within the last ten years, for example, at the Tate Museum, against BP after the Gulf oil spill. More recently, [there have been] protests against pharmaceutical firms. For example, OxyContin from the Sackler family supported a lot of museums. There have been artists and activists protesting against sponsorship, at least since the 1970s and 80s.
Kamea Chayne: The impetus for a lot of these corporate sponsorships largely has to do with their abilities to associate their brand image with, for example, the art institutions. It might be a way for them to improve their publicity and their reputation among the general public. I'm also wondering if there are ways that they're able to influence, for example, what's actually curated within museums to shift the dialogs and the narratives and the general takeaways that people get from experiencing these exhibitions.
Mark Rectanus: Sometimes they have influence. I found in general with art museums, usually the museum will come to the sponsor with a concept or an idea, and then the sponsor will see how well it fits either with their marketing [campaigns] or with their overall vision for their company. There's a negotiation that goes on.
One of the key questions is whether the values of the sponsor or patron are aligned with the principles of the sponsored organization. Whether that's a museum, a nonprofit, a social institution, [or an] educational institution, that's a negotiation. There's an exchange. There's a financial exchange, but there's also an exchange of cultural capital that goes on. They're both trying to determine what they get out of that exchange,
In many cases, corporations are using [the museum's cultural capital] to reaffirm their status in a local community.
Some sponsors are very interested in the local impact. Is it going to have an impact on people in the community who will [then] have a favorable view of the sponsor? Other sponsors are looking more for a national impact.
Now, whether that affects the work of art… In many cases, artists are increasingly concerned about the context in which their work is displayed and exhibited and also the values of the museum and the values of the sponsor. That has become more and more critical. Last year, there was a case at the Whitney during the Whitney Biennial where several artists withdrew their work from the show when it was apparent that one of the Whitney board members was a CEO of a company that sold tear gas that was used against protesters in a number of instances across the United States.
Artists play a pivotal role here. They look at not only the corporate sponsor but also look at the institution of the museum itself. Are those values being implemented and practiced by the sponsor, [and] by the museum? The corporate sponsor may claim to be socially responsible, for example, the Tate Museum in London and BP, [and yet] after the Gulf oil spill, protesters and activists were saying, no, this doesn't really reflect corporate responsibility. They also question[ed] the museum. Are they supporting the values that they advocate? This has become a very big issue for many museums.
Kamea Chayne: Overall, you provide a nuanced view of the privatization of cultural funding. What are some of the positives of this shift potentially? Then, of course, what are the negatives?
Mark Rectanus: In terms of funding...
One has to keep in mind that most institutions today have to rely on multiple sources of funding.
They may receive government funding, foundation funding, and corporate sponsor funding. They also, in the case of museums, are receiving revenue from ticket sales from bookshops and restaurants. They're not dependent on just one source of funding, but the corporate funding may have a bigger impact than other sources of funding.
Museums, in particular, may get ongoing funding from the government: local government, the federal government, foundations, other private sources, and endowments that cover their ongoing costs. But for an exhibition, then they will frequently turn to sponsors, which provide them with an additional source of funding. So that can be a positive aspect of support. Some artists will [also] receive funding from corporate sources to fund residencies or artist-in-residence programs. Getting that type of support can help them on a particular project.
[At the same time] I find many artists are wary about aligning themselves too closely with corporate interests for all of the reasons that I just mentioned, because the corporate values, corporate mission, and corporate goals may shift. I find most artists are somewhat reluctant to become too dependent on any one funding source or any one patron. Museums are probably also the same, although there are certainly some museums that have embraced more corporate funding than others.
The other thing to keep in mind is that many museums—I'm talking about large global museums now—have almost become corporate entities, in and of themselves. So they're essentially operating like corporations. The museum has accepted the corporate business model and they're operating under a similar logic as corporations. That really makes things more complex. The Guggenheim Museum is a good example of that. It's frequently cited as a corporate clone or global museum that's franchised itself and generated some revenue [through] that.
Kamea Chayne: This discussion about the ethics of corporate funding makes me think about how I don't believe ethical purity is possible inside of an extractive and exploitative system, because when the economic system that we have currently already undervalues ecological resources, human labor and so forth, it's going to result in corporations that took advantage of that skewed value, most likely having the most financial capital.
When we're talking about our need to decentralize wealth, economic resources, and power, we also inevitably have to be taking those away from the corporations that traditionally benefited from the system, because we have to have those corporations give up some of their wealth. But I guess it would also only lead to really positive outcomes if they gave up their wealth without any contingencies or without strings attached and [without] using these opportunities as an exchange for their ability to better their public images.
Mark Rectanus: Yes. It's a very complex system. As you said, you can't really isolate one part, or one institution or one actor being an artist, an individual or a museum or a corporation or a government. They are all part of [the system].
For example, Europe had by and large government support for the arts, [which] changed quite a bit in the 1980s and 1990s, [with] more neoliberal privatization of arts funding. If you say, “Well, we're not going to have any corporate funding,” or “We're just going to have government funding,” then you can have a lot of political influence. That was apparent in the United States during the so-called culture wars. Again, coming back to tobacco, there was one artist named Hans Hockett who did a number of provocative artworks dealing with government impact on artwork. It is very difficult to isolate one actor, one agent in the system from the other because they're all interconnected. Without comprehensive, systemic change, it's very difficult to change other components of the system.
Recently, with Black Lives Matter, social justice activism and protests, I think this has come more and more to the forefront. There is more and more of a realization that there needs to be systemic change and institutional change. This is what protesters and activists have said with respect to art museums—that art museums cannot just support socially engaged, socially progressive artists and art exhibitions without making changes in their own institutional structure. So, if they don't have more equity in their boards and how they hire or in the wages that they pay to their employees and fees that are paid to artists, then these exhibitions are just superficial because they don't result in any substantive, systemic change.
This gets back to your question...
Can you really change one part of the system without changing other parts of the system, because they are so interdependent?
Certainly, in the case of the art world, that's a particularly important issue. I'll give you one statistic. In 2019, the global art market was valued at over US$64 billion, with the US, the UK, and China accounting for 82% of global sales. When you consider that, you see that museums are really also tied into a global art market, particularly contemporary art museums, because investors in the art market are trying to have their work shown in art museums so it will increase the value of their work. The financial industry is also very interested in art as an investment. I think institutional dependencies and institutional connections underscore that it's very difficult to separate one from the other.
In many protests today, many activists are pointing to these connections, particularly in the United States, as I mentioned, between museum boards that are very dependent on donors who are art collectors themselves. That's why they're on museum boards. But they're also donating large amounts of money to museums. The artists and activists are questioning the values of museum boards and donors and the museums themselves.
[And] many of the staff members who work for museums are questioning their own museums. [There] used to be this assumption that museums were by and large neutral. Now workers for museums are saying we need to move beyond neutrality. We need to advocate for socially responsible positions. We also need to make sure that board members and people who have control of museums are also socially responsible.
Kamea Chayne: On a related note, in the last few years, there's been a more intentional effort by museums in the US, Europe, and Australia to “decolonize” their institutions, as many museums have roots in colonialism, often with troubling histories of how their artifacts and artworks were acquired. What comes to mind for you here?
Mark Rectanus: That's a big topic and a very important one, and that covers quite a few areas.
Decolonizing museums is something artists are very interested in and museums have been trying to make some headway, with greater or lesser success—in my opinion, in many instances less success in terms of decolonizing museums…
[Decolonizing museums] can mean decolonizing collections. Some museums are looking to achieve greater representation of work by artists of color in their collections because in the past the collections have largely been European, white, male artists. [It could also mean,] particularly with ethnographic museums, to attempt to partner with communities of color and Indigenous communities.
[There is also] the repatriation or restitution of collections to the countries where these works were taken or looted over the course of centuries. In France, there was a report that came out called the Baza Savoy Report that was commissioned by Macron, the president of France. France had this intention of trying to return and repatriate a lot of artworks, and there's been criticism because that hasn't happened yet.
[And there’s also] museum staffing or diverse and inclusive staffing, and curatorial staff who will bring in a more diverse program. So that's another goal.
But achieving all of these changes also comes back to issues that we were talking about before related to systemic change in museums. This past summer, in light of many demonstrations, there have been quite a few discussions within museum circles about how best to achieve this transformational change in decolonizing museums or cultural institutions. My own view is that these substantive changes will not occur until there are changes in many institutions and governments. The funding comes back to what we were talking about earlier.
If you don't change the governance, who is running the museum?
Who has the power to make decisions about how the museum is going to be run on a day-to-day basis? Who was chosen as the museum director? Who's on the board? What influence does the board have and where do they get their funding from unless you change those things?
My view is that institutional change will be limited because you're still going to be tied to funding. For example, if a museum is dependent upon wealthy audience members, then how do you replace [that funding]? If you say we don't want these wealthy board members anymore, they have too much influence, where do you pick up the funding if they're not there? There's also been a suggestion that many US museums should have more artists on their boards. There are some museums in Germany that are almost completely governed by artists. But then if your government funding is capped or other funding sources are cut, how do you pick up that slack? It's a difficult question.
Kamea Chayne: We know that there is, for example, the media industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, military industrial complex, nonprofit industrial complex, that really highlight the role of power and money in shaping these fields. So I wonder if there's such a thing as maybe the museum industrial complex...
Mark Rectanus: You might call it the art-industrial complex or the museum industrial complex. That is certainly the case.
The statistic that I mentioned before about the size of the global art market and investment in the market is a part of that. There are quite a few people who invest in artwork without any intention of ever showing it in a public museum. There are also investment funds where art and culture are seen as capital investments, venture capital. There are also wealth management funds that will provide consultancies for private investors so that they can receive advice on managing their collections.
Very large investment funds have seen this as a market and they can get involved and that does have an impact on museums, not only in terms of board members who are very wealthy art investors. They may like art or love art, but they are also seeing art as an investment. They want to be closely aligned with institutions that are involved in art. There are these huge art fairs like Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, which is also an art fair in Miami. These art fairs have also become global events, almost like the annual meetings in Davos.
These art fairs become industrial corporate centers for art investment.
Kamea Chayne: Your latest book, Museums Inside Out, looks at how artist-museum collaborations are reshaping what it means to be a museum in the 21st century. Specifically, you investigate how museums are blurring the boundaries between their gallery walls and public spaces. When most people think of museums these days, we likely think of these physical galleries and buildings that house certain pieces of artwork, depending on the theme. So, what has been changing about this, and how do you think blurring this line between museums and public spaces will influence the cultural institutions and impact our society?
Mark Rectanus: It's a multifaceted question. I found it to be a very interesting one, observing how museums were involved more and more in collaborations with artists, playing a pivotal role not only physically outside of museums, but also conceptually moving outside of museums, thinking about what museums do differently.
In the 21st century, more and more museum directors have said that an art museum is not necessarily a place, it's also an idea.
If you start from [that point], a museum can be anything. It can be anywhere. It can be a pop-up museum that maybe lasts just for a couple of weeks or months with an exhibition run by artists and curators and loosely affiliated with a museum. Or it can be a more well-established museum that works with communities. [Museums have] realized that they need to be more engaged in communities. My own view is they're not engaged enough. They're still setting the agenda. But I think there's definitely been more of a shift towards community-based projects.
I can give you some examples of museums moving out in Frankfurt, for example, the Schirn Kunsthalle Museum that's an art space and museum supported a group of artists from Brazil. It was called Street Art Brazil. The museum commissioned them to go throughout the city of Frankfurt and paint murals in different places. One was at a police station. Some were on bridges, some were in other public spaces, public squares. For a period of two or three weeks, they created these murals, and then they invited the public to capture pictures of themselves on Instagram and then post them and then send them back to the museum. Then, in the rotunda of the museum, they had a video mosaic where they would change all the pictures that people had taken from the Street Art Brazil project in Frankfurt and move the outside art space to the inside, but also moving the inside art space to the outside. That's just one example of this movement in and out of art spaces.
But I think to [really have museums become more community-based and for them to become more involved in communities], they have to give communities a lot more power to actually develop and drive the projects, rather than coming to the community and saying, we've got an idea, would you like to collaborate with us?
Kamea Chayne: While increasingly, a lot of people are talking about pressuring corporations to have more sustainable and ethical practices and then also pressuring our politicians to do certain things that are positive for our society. Do you then feel that everyday people can have a meaningful impact by doing the same with the art institutions that we have around so that they can realize the goal of ideally collaborating more with communities and, of course, Indigenous communities as well?
Mark Rectanus: I think they can have an impact. That's been shown with some of the activist movements that protest museum policies. There are activist movements outside of museums and the Occupy movement in New York and other global protest movements had a great impact internationally on what's going on. A lot of grassroots movements can have an impact on museums.
[But also,] within museums, there are people working for art museums [or in the industry] who want to see museums move beyond neutrality, and who have a great interest in promoting social justice and the environment. They're working to try to change museums and cultural institutions internally. [And at the same time,] there are groups working externally. I do think that people can have an impact if they are organized and if they collaborate.
I think I saw that resonate last summer. But again, it will take time to see whether that really results in transformational systemic change. But is it having some impact now? I think it is.
*** CLOSING ***
Kamea Chayne: What has been an impactful book that you've read or a publication that you follow?
Mark Rectanus: This is probably no surprise, [but] I find artwork to be very inspiring. For example, the artwork of an artist called El Anatsui from Ghana, beautiful tapestries [made] from found [objects]. In terms of magazines or books, I like to read Preservation Magazine. I've always been interested in the historic preservation of innovative architectural sites.
Kamea Chayne: What do you tell yourself to stay motivated and inspired?
Mark Rectanus: I enjoy discovering something new every day. I'm inspired by art and culture on a daily basis. I reflect on what I learn from them. I also gain a lot of inspiration from my family and friends.
Kamea Chayne: What makes you most hopeful for our planet and world at the moment?
Mark Rectanus: In my professional life, I've worked a lot with students and I'm really impressed with the very strong commitment among the current generation of students to environmental issues and sustainability, not only in the US but in many other countries.
Kamea Chayne: Mark, this has been a really fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for joining us here and sharing your expertise and your learning lessons. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?
Mark Rectanus: Engage art and culture wherever you find them, as sources of inspiration. Learn new languages as a portal to cultures and to new ways of experiencing the world and interacting with people outside of your own community and culture. Support social justice and collaborate with others who share your vision.
