Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY
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sponsorship money going to sports) – there is a good deal more prestige to come
from support for Glyndebourne than for an exhibit in the Ashmolean Museum.
Still more serious is the fact that sponsors do not get involved for altruistic
reasons. They decide to support particular exhibitions and/or particular institutions
for business reasons. Bluntly, sponsorship is a variant of advertising, ‘a
business tool . . . with a sponsor expecting to get something in return for support’
(Turner, 1987, p. 11). Now, it is true that corporate sponsors (the most courted)
have a wide range of reasons which impel their business strategies, and these
may often mean there is a ‘light touch’ when it comes to the level of the content
displayed in the museum or gallery. Nonetheless, light or heavy, the touch is
distinctly one which relies on the desires of the sponsor – something seekers after
support must court by planning appropriately attractive exhibits if they wish the
seduction to take place (Shaw, 1990).
Dangers of this situation are obvious at a moment’s reflection, though too
often the cash-hungry institution can ignore them. As an art critic, angry at the
spectacular rise of sponsorship during the 1980s that turned ‘London’s public
galleries . . . into shop windows and sumptuous advertising malls for arms manufacturers
and credit salesmen’ (Januszczak, 1986), observed:
Sponsors see the art gallery as a relatively cheap, high profile advertising
hoarding and they go there to launder their reputations. They naturally
support the kind of art which they calculate will reflect well on them; as their
influence grows so does the power of their censorship.
(Januszczak, 1985)
I referred earlier to indirect effects of the introduction of entry charges. By
this I mean that the commitment to commercial practices readily leads museums
and galleries to compete for customers with out-and-out market ventures such
as Madame Tussaud’s. This requires a constant search for the exotic, unusual
and attention-grabbing exhibit that will lure the public, and it highlights a growing
tendency towards the mounting of ‘entertainments’ in places dedicated to
housing art treasures and historical relics. There is, of course, a grey area dividing
making exhibitions accessible and the trivialising of artistic and cultural works.
Many commentators, however, believe that the boundaries have been crossed,
and here they point to the paradox of a boom in commercial museums alongside
ongoing crises in state-supported institutions.
The paradox is resolved when these ventures are seen as expressions of the
leisure industry, ‘museums’ which offer easily digested and unchallenging nostalgia
in Disney style: elaborate sound effects, eye-catching scenery, quick changes of
attractions, video games, animatronics, re-created smells and symbols, and above
all ‘participation’ for the paying customers who are urged to ‘enjoy’ and have ‘fun’.
To Robert Hewison (1987) these – everything from the burgeoning growth of commercialised
stately homes to theme parks such as Nottingham’s ‘Tales of Robin
Hood’ – represent the ascendancy of the ‘heritage industry’, something which
threatens to dominate the arena of museums and galleries (and extend far beyond),
presenting audiences with a cosy and mythological ‘England as it once was’.
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