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that Holden mentions under the heading of institutional value, such as trustworthiness,
transparency and fairness (2006, 18), might be referred to as ‘brand value’
and ‘customer service’ in commercial contexts; however, Holden also considers
the role that cultural organisations play as arbiters of taste to be part of the service
they provide to the public.
He argues that ‘professional judgement must extend beyond evidence-based
decision-making’ (2004, 10). While Holden rejects the patrician assertion of elite
cultural values (2004, 24) and maintains that ‘Cultural Value must … be based
on what the public themselves perceive’ (2004, 51-52), he asserts that confident
professional judgment need not kowtow to ‘short-term public preferences’ (2004,
48). Cultural professionals are thus presumed able to recognise and reveal the
value of cultural products, which might be overlooked by an untrained eye. Just
as newspaper readers value the judgments expressed by professional art critics,
Holden considers the subjective judgment of arts funders and presenters to be a
service to the public and a form of institutional value.
Holden laments that generations of cultural managers have sought to conceal the
subjective nature of their judgment ‘because it is essentially political’ (2004, 44),
preferring instead to justify their decisions with ‘objective’ outcome measures.
Due to cultural professionals’ refusal to embrace their role as arbiters of taste, ‘the
essence of culture has been lost’ (2004, 20). Holden argues that since ‘the space in
which objects or performances appear, their critical reception and the climate of
public and political opinion all affect cultural value’ and that cultural managers
must endeavour to frame cultural products in such a way that the capacity and
potential that lie within them (see Holden’s concept of ‘intrinsic value’ above) are
transformed into cultural value (2004, 36). Cultural managers have the ability
to influence public perception and thus create value where previously there had
merely been potential. Holden’s position here resonates with Klamer’s call for
education and public discourse as a means of building cultural capital.
Despite appearing in the title of Holden’s 2004 and 2006 publications, cultural
value remains a rather amorphous concept, and its relation to Holden’s value
triangle remains unclear. Holden’s use of the term has often been taken to mean
the sum of all values created by a cultural good—the whole of the value triangle
(Hewison, 23; Hutter and Throsby, 8); however this is not explicitly stated in
either of the works reviewed here. Indeed, the definition of cultural value formulated
in 2004 is somewhat awkward in that it specifies what cultural value does,
rather than what it is. Thus, cultural value ‘recognizes the affective elements of
cultural experience, … seeks a forward-looking model for assessing broad public
value, … adopts unchanging public goods… as long-term objectives’, etc. (2004,
10).
Framing the Conversation 43
UNDERSTANDING the value and impacts of cultural experiences