Art in Public: Politics, Economics, and a Democratic Culture

Lambert Zuidervaart

Nov 2010 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

This book examines fundamental questions about funding for the arts: why should governments provide funding for the arts? What do the arts contribute to daily life? Do artists and their publics have a social responsibility? Challenging questionable assumptions about the state, the arts and a democratic society, Lambert Zuidervaart presents a vigorous case for government funding, based on crucial contributions the arts make to civil society. He argues that the arts contribute to democratic communication and a social economy, fostering the critical and creative dialogue that a democratic society needs. Informed by the author's experience leading a non-profit arts organisation as well as his expertise in the arts, humanities and social sciences, this book proposes an entirely new conception of the public role of art with wide-ranging implications for education, politics and cultural policy.

About the author

Lambert Zuidervaart is Professor of Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, where he holds the Herman Dooyeweerd Chair in Social and Political Philosophy, and an Associate member of the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the former President of the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His most recent books with Cambridge University Press - Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure and Social Philosophy after Adorno - received Symposium Book Awards from the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy in 2006 and 2008, respectively. His book Adorno's Aesthetic Theory (1991) was the first major study in English on Adorno's aesthetics.