[artinfo] Adelheid Mers: Arts Organizations in Society

[Janos Sugar]

In the fall of 2009, I took on the core introductory course, "Arts 
Organizations in Society," in the MA program in Arts Administration 
and Policy at SAIC. The syllabus was to cover key areas: National 
Cultural Policy, Cultural Economics, Heritage and Tourism, Public 
Art, issues in Museum Studies, Creative Industries, Digital Heritage 
and Electronic Policy.
Given my proclivities, I sketched out a diagram of the course content 
as I assembled it, a first version by hand, subsequent ones in 
Illustrator. I recounted familiar narratives from museology - the 
emergence of the museum from budding scientific, archaeological and 
ethnographic classificatory systems in colonial and domestic 
political contexts on the one hand, and from the Wunderkammer to 
contemporary dedicated architectures on the other.
I also constructed a lineage I had not found spelt out in literature, 
the emergence of what is now designated as 'Creative Industries' from 
the discoveries and proud and crude parading of both industrial 
innovation and ethnic difference at world fairs at the same time as 
the museum emerged, to the economic centrality of innovation and the 
marketing of diversity today. 
http://adelheidmers.org/aweb/artsorgs.htm