What is it about?

Instead of trying to find meaningless, quantitative indicators of artistic values in order to satisfy the urgent legitimation need of arts administrators and policy makers, cultural researchers should engage in the long-term endeavour of understanding what these values are according to those who engage with the arts in the most diverse forms.

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Why is it important?

Research on cultural values has been so far characterized by speculative approaches on the one hand, and quantitative approaches on the other hand. Both do not help art administrators in effectively legitimating the role of the arts toward the public. While speculative approaches are deemed to fail in a context dominated by evidence-based policies, quantitative approaches are deemed to neglect the complexity and contextuality in which artistic values emerge. An approach in which evidence is offered by actual stories of diverse forms and experiences of engagement with the arts can help to solve arts administrators' urgent, practical problem of legitimation; also, it opens a long but effective avenue toward a rich understanding of cultural values.

Perspectives

This article shows how I came to my conclusion about the necessity of an ethnographic turn in researching cultural values. Instead of giving a theoretical argumentation, I do an autobiographical ethnography; my conclusion emerges progressively through the different phases of my experience with research on the values of art. This makes this article accessible to a broader audience than only an academic one.

Francesco Chiaravalloti
Universiteit van Amsterdam

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This page is a summary of: Stop measuring, start understanding! An arts policy and management researcher’s autobiographic account of the urgency of an ethnographic turn in research on the values of art1, Art & the Public Sphere, December 2020, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/aps_00038_1.
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