Culture at the Crossroads: Culture and Cultural Institutions at the Beginning of the 21st Century

By Marc Pachter and Charles Landry (Comedia, 2001, ISBN 1-837667-132 £9.00 [£11.72 inc.p&p]*)

Should we be worried about contemporary developments in culture? This book sets out the need for immediate concern in a stimulating fashion. It sees culture as something that provides us with meaningful insights, eliciting genuine and direct emotional experiences and responses and helps us understand the complex relationships between intellect, instincts and everyday life. The book gives us many reasons why culture may not be working in this way. Above all there is a general danger that cultural experiences are becoming superficial, artificial and fake. Concerns are raised about historical continuity with cultural traditions, the effects of modern digital technology, commercialisation, globalisation, and democratisation upon the sorts of cultural experience that are sought after and are available for people today. The focus of the book, and its chief interest for cultural management, is the proper contemporary role of `cultural institutions’, for example art galleries and museums, in devising and offering cultural experiences in a confusing and rapidly changing world.

The need for institutional change is recognised and many examples of the form they should take are given, making reference to a wide range of current developments in a variety of sectors and countries. Current views that these institutions should operate in an instrumental way to boost the image and economies of cities or localities are considered as being over simplistic and having the potential to counteract another goal of community development. Also, none of these give the necessary sense of ambition that is required to ensure that culture performs its proper role for us in society. As culture slips more and more out of the control of these traditional largely place bound cultural institutions and more and more into the media, onto the web and into the commercial sector of retail outlets and entertainment parks, they may be losing their ability to act as cultural icons to give our culture the continuity and coherence that is required in a confusing modern world.

The book is a concise and coherent call for considered change in our cultural institutions; it outlines clearly the dimensions of the debates about the nature of contemporary culture and policy making in which this should take place. It also links these to practical examples of current developments in existing institutions. However, it does neglect important questions of power about the way that these debates should take place and the way they will fit into the decision making process. More fundamentally there is the question of whether they should take place at all? After all who exactly is worried about our culture? Is this the man in the street — who may be enjoying these changes - or is it some elite of intellectuals, critics, and arts managers?

Review by John Tomkins, Former Lecturer in Sociology, South Bank University

SAM's Books compiles the Bookshop section of Arts Professional magazine, and used to compile Bookshop in its predecessor, Arts Business. This review has appeared in Arts Professional or Arts Business. It gives a longer and more personal description of the book than appears in the booklists.