Arts Funding

Abstract

The term ‘arts funding’ refers to processes aimed at providing the frameworks for the production, dissemination, and consumption of art objects. Historical descriptions of arts funding focus particularly on the economic aspects, that is, how individuals, groups, institutions, and agencies, over time have been willing to pay for art objects to be produced, disseminated, and consumed. ‘Patron’ is the term for various funding sources. ‘The arts’ is often associated with the visual arts. The processes attached to arts funding are also relevant for other art forms. Thus, they comprise creative artists such as painters, sculptors, composers, and writers, and performing artists like musicians and actors, all being funded directly by patrons and by institutions where they have worked, or indirectly through various regulatory means. Arts funding research has been exploring economic preconditions for creative and performing artistic work, the various social settings in which this has taken place, who has paid for such activities, and why they have done so. This makes arts funding a social phenomenon in the sense that its existence and organizational forms depend upon persons and institutions constituting certain configurations that differ with time and location.