ABSTRACT
Ownership and control of arts organizations implies issues of oversight and governance. The commercial sector of the arts, which is the focus of the first section, can be divided into two main categories: personal capitalism associated with owneroperated or closely held organizations; and managerial capitalism of large corporations either publicly listed or under private equity. The relationship between financial ownership and management control is a topic of long significance in corporate governance, in response to the rise of the publicly listed corporation during the twentieth century. To accentuate the relevance to arts management, attention is drawn to business models from commercial arts organizations: art market intermediaries, namely art dealers and auction houses; and a music company, EMI, acquired in 2007 by private equity firm Terra Firma. Pertinent issues regarding the corporate governance of not-for-profit arts organizations – namely the role of trustees in linking the governance and management functions of the organization through a ‘chief executive’ and the often knotty relationships associated with elite arts patronage – are addressed in the second section. In the third section, institutional isomorphic change is based on the work of sociologists Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, who contend that certain conditions result in the homogeneity of organizational forms and practices. How do institutional pressures make organizations within the same field such as art museums and opera houses resemble one another? ‘Philosophies of philanthropy’, a complementary appendix, addresses fundraising, a traditional view of philanthropy, and the emergence of so-called venture philanthropy.
