ABSTRACT
This short introductory chapter explains the structure of the book and says more about the selection principles determining its content. Funding the Arts engages with public policy toward the arts by developing ideas about funding in particular. It suggests that funders could do a better job if they knew more about the history of ideas informing modern social science (including some ideas that have fallen out of fashion but might be worth reviving), and more about the heavily politicized processes of negotiation that brought modern funding systems into being.
Five main system types are identified and briefly characterized: arts councils; arts ministries; job-creation agencies; glory machines; and philanthropic mission machines. This is done to help readers decide which system or combination of systems they are living under, and decide in turn how much attention they want to give to parts of the book that seem to be discussing others. In hope of reaching useful conclusions, later chapters do generalize as far as possible, focusing attention on problems intrinsic to funding as an activity—problems of choice (selection/rejection), goal-setting (what is funding for?) and accountability (funding for whose benefit?). Chapter 1 makes the book’s intentions and admitted limitations clear.
