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      An Institutional Politics of Place: Rethinking the Critical Function of Art in Times of Growing Inequality

      1 , 1 , 1
      Cultural Sociology
      SAGE Publications

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          Abstract

          This article reflects on the current status of art’s critical power in a world of intensifying economic inequality. We document how the art world is saturated with economic imperatives that limit the power of conventional artistic critique to meaningfully contest economic instrumentalism. Such imperatives also constrain both artistic and curatorial choices, with profound implications for questions of representation. Informed by interviews with artists, curators and managers of leading art institutions in London, we outline an emergent politics that acknowledges the way that inequalities are sustained and accumulate over long periods of time and is committed to addressing ‘historic wrongs’. We argue that an especially powerful dimension here is geographical, with institutions reconsidering their own historical and contemporary locations as a means of subverting universalising narratives that mask dominant power. We suggest that this focus on spatiality presents a promising approach to addressing contemporary inequalities in the art world by being able to productively link concerns around representation to a critical recognition of the spatially located impact of economic inequality.

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          Capital in the Twenty-First Century

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            The Politics of Recognition

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              Capital and Ideology

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Cultural Sociology
                Cultural Sociology
                SAGE Publications
                1749-9755
                1749-9763
                June 2021
                October 27 2020
                June 2021
                : 15
                : 2
                : 171-190
                Affiliations
                [1 ]London School of Economics, UK
                Article
                10.1177/1749975520964357
                d43c26e1-4e3d-444b-9597-d42cd4c828df
                © 2021

                https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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