Understanding institutional theory The property that all works of art have in common is their existence within the institutional context of the “artworld”
The property that all works of art have in common is their existence within the institutional context of the “artworld”

The property that all works of art have in common is their existence within the institutional context of the “artworld”

Knowledge Mushohwe

The art world is defined as an informal institution which embodies and encompasses the various formal and informal institutions within particular “artworld systems,” each of which fosters and supports the production and appreciation of a particular kind of art.

Throughout several centuries stretching back to the era of philosophers such as Plato, stakeholders in the art world have struggled to find a true definition of art.
In the eighteenth century, a cluster of disciplines, including sculpture, painting, architecture, music and poetry, were classified as belonging to the umbrella category of fine ‘arts’.

Other art critics have since disproved of this categorisation, not because one is seen as inferior or different when compared to another, but identifying art as a genre best understood as an open concept, and the pursuit of a real definition restricts the creative and self-revolutionising capacity of art.

While there exist several theories that offer overly narrow conceptions of art that quite simply cannot account for artistic diversity, such as Leo Tolstoy’s moralist theory or R. G. Collingwood’s expressionist theory, there are others that attempt to accommodate it. One such definition has been provided by George Dickie.

Dickie puts forward the institutional theory, a detailed framework that provided a definition of art that he believed could account for both artistic creativity and variability, one that, according to him, “absorbs all previous theories” into one single theoretical structure.

Dickie’s view is that philosophers throughout centuries had been searching for the wrong kind of common property in creative works.
The property that all works of art have in common is their existence within the institutional context of the “artworld.”

Dickie asserts that art can only be identified as such by some person or persons acting on behalf of a social institution within the artworld.
When king confers a knighthood, a chairman of an election body certifies that someone is qualified to run for office, and a church minister pronounces a couple as man and wife, Dickie says these are examples of a person or persons acting on behalf of a social institution.

Similarly, someone from the institution of the arts may confer some sort of status on products of creativity.
In Dickie’s view, the “art world” is responsible for conferring the status of art on specific objects.

The art world is defined as an informal institution which embodies and encompasses the various formal and informal institutions within particular “art world systems,” each of which fosters and supports the production and appreciation of a particular kind of art.

Members of the art world include artists, audiences, curators, museum directors, docents, Sotheby’s agents, collectors, art teachers, art professors, philosophers of art, critics, government funding agents, and quite generally anyone who is interested in art.

An object’s location within some aspect of this vast network is what is necessary to transform it into a work of art, and this is the only property that is common to all works of art.

According to Dickie, an artist is a person who participates with understanding in the making of a work of art.
A work of art is an artefact of a kind created to be presented to an art world public, according to the institutional theory.

A public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to understand an object which is presented to them, Dickie says.
The art world is the totality of all art-world systems.

The institutional theory states that an art world system is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an art world public.
Art by its very nature is sustained and understood against a background of social conventions and rules that are similar in terms of their structure rather than the particular values they perpetuate or facilitate. What all works of art have in common is their existence in and dependence upon the structure of an artworld system.

What is interesting as a result of this formulation is that the artworld as an institutional framework now becomes the centre of philosophical attention rather than the nature or value of particular works of art.

Dickie’s theory can be said to breathe new life into the problem of defining art, insofar as a different kind of common property is identified for the first time in the history of aesthetic theory, one that can quite possibly accommodate artistic diversity and creativity.

But insofar as this property is institutional, it can encourage us to reform our understanding of the value of the history of aesthetic theory.
The institutional theory however, does have its limitations.

According to the theory, a drawing of art hidden in my mother’s backyard might be a work of art according to the dictates or principles of some aesthetic theory, or according to the elements and principles of art, but yet it is not really a work of art because it has no role in the art world and its status has not been conferred by an actual “public,” since my mother cannot fulfil such a role.

Institutional theory unfortunately has a certain level of arbitrariness to the conferment of status, since the art world is ultimately a social construction and thus is subject to change and variability dependent upon the ways in which members of various art world publics fill their roles. The fact that subjectivity is more than likely makes institutional theory very unreliable.

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