It was 1989. A large-format photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine, funded with public money, was included in a post-competition exhibition. American taxpayers felt betrayed by the curatorial elite. The case led to a radical cut in the National Endowment for the Arts’ budget and the introduction of the so-called decency clause, which required artists to respect common social values or risk losing their funding.
The story of Andres Serrano, the winner of the prestigious Awards in the Visual Arts scholarship, who became a beneficiary of funds from the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and his work Piss Christ (1987) mark a turning point in the history of public patronage. It was the moment when aesthetic resistance to institutional hierarchy moved from the gallery space directly to the political podium. As a result, the dispute, which was now not only about aesthetics but, above all, about the limits of creative freedom, ended with a Supreme Court ruling that sanctioned the state’s right to decide what kind of content deserves public funding.
In the light of public opinion
Similar artistic and social turning points are a permanent feature of contemporary art history. The reasons for the increasing debate surrounding this field are provided by both the artists themselves and the decision-makers behind prestigious competitions and institutions. The British Turner Prize, organised by Tate, has long been considered one of the most discussed awards in this field.
The nearly annual discussions surrounding its participants expose a whole cacophony of social objections: from the art world’s glorification of the fetishisation of incompetence and “attacks on morality” (the main prize for Damien Hirst for Mother and Child (Divided), 1995, or the nomination for Tracey Emin for My Bed, 1999), to criticism of the marginalisation of individual artists in favour of collectives (2021 winner Array Collective), to accusations of connections and institutional nepotism, as well as the use of the award to account for the past and repay historical debts (the 2017 award for Lubaina Himid, the first black woman and oldest winner in history) or placing political correctness above the assessment of the quality of works.
Problems arise when this private artistic field is extended into the public sphere, especially when this happens with the approval of museums or galleries.
Boundaries in art are pushed all the time, and if this happens in the personal world of artists, it is usually socially acceptable. Problems arise when this private artistic field is extended into the public sphere, especially when this happens with the approval of museums or galleries.
The escalation of social sentiment and the disagreement of some members of society regarding the use of public funds to support projects that are met with opposition by some audience members reveals something important: a tacit aesthetic contract operating within society. When it is violated, tension rapidly turns into anger directed primarily at the hermetic nature of the art world, whose aesthetic codes are understood mainly by its own members.
This also shows that society frequently passes more severe verdicts, and artists sometimes have to undergo a double verification of acceptance: by institutional boards and by audiences. While the decisions of the former are increasingly subject to scrutiny, there is no clear indication of who, how, or even whether social verdicts are scrutinised at all.
And the voice of the audience does not go unheard, as demonstrated by the example of the National Portrait Gallery, which, under years of pressure and protests by activists, ended its partnership with BP. The decision to drop the main sponsor of the prestigious BP Portrait Award showed that today’s public can effectively challenge the moral foundations of institutions.
On social trust in museums
Since the 1970s, sociological and political literature, especially in studies on changes in values and political culture, has diagnosed a “decline of deference.” In the 1990s, this diagnosis was further developed in the works of Neil Nevitte, Pippa Norris, and Russell J. Dalton, among others. This does not mean that questioning authority is a new phenomenon – opposition to political, religious, or expert authority has been a part of the history of society for a very long time. Yet the scale, intensity, and social normativity of such questioning are changing.
In this context, the field of museum institutions – especially in the European and North American settings – seems to function in a rather paradoxical way. A representative nationwide study, “The Hidden Capital: Trust in Museums in Germany” (Institut für Museumsforschung, 2024), shows that museums in Germany belong to the most trusted public institutions. They are second only to family and friends, and ahead of scientists, the media, and, with a clear advantage, political institutions. These results are similar to data from other Western countries. The American Alliance of Museums’ “Museums and Trust 2021” report, based on a nationwide survey in the United States, indicates that museums are the second most trusted source of information after “friends and family,” significantly ahead of the government, media, corporations, non-governmental organisations, and social media.
Similar tendencies are observed in some of the national reports included in the “EMA European Museum Report 2023.” In analyses conducted for, among others, Sweden and Norway, the authors emphasise that trust in museums has remained at a very high level for years there. In the case of Sweden, these results can be accurately linked to long-term research by the SOM Institute (University of Gothenburg), where the “trust balance” index for museums reached a historic high in 2023 (over 72), surpassing trust in the healthcare system and public health agencies. This means that in some national contexts, museums rank at the very top of the hierarchy of institutions that are trusted by the public.
The research conducted in Poland also suggests that the main challenge faced by museums is generally not a clear lack of trust, but rather the level and structure of visitor participation. Here, partly thanks to the project “Museum Audiences in Poland” conducted by the National Institute of Museology and Collection Protection (currently: National Institute for Museums), there is growing interest in researching audiences (their needs, experiences, and participation barriers), although many institutions are just beginning to develop systematic evaluation practices.
A neutral institution
Studies on trust in museums stress that it is largely conditional: it does exist, but primarily towards institutions perceived as “neutral” and “above politics.” The problem begins when we try to clarify what this neutrality should actually mean and whether, in the case of museums and galleries, it is possible to create a space that is completely free from exclusion and violence, and at the same time capable of accommodating many themes and voices coming from extremely diverse social groups.
In this constant balancing between maintaining the institution’s autonomy and responding to the needs of the public, is there room, firstly, to restore the due agency of female artists who have been systematically overlooked in art history and, at the same time, as noted by Claire Bishop, to create a real space for underrepresented ethnic minorities, migrants, and artists with disabilities? And secondly, is there room for the right to a voice for those who do not position themselves on the same side of the political dispute as the museum or institution?
More and more museums and other cultural institutions consciously engage in debates on racism, colonialism, LGBTQ+ rights, structural violence, and war. While some audiences interpret this gesture as a necessary extension of the museum’s role to that of an inspirer of new solutions and a place that constantly responds to the changing reality around it, others see it as an unwanted politicisation of a space that was supposed to remain neutral. Consequently, structural trust in museums remains high, but it is increasingly dependent on who the institution represents, what narratives it accepts, and how it manages conflicts of memory and identity.
Structural trust in museums remains high, but it is increasingly dependent on who the institution represents, what narratives it accepts, and how it manages conflicts of memory and identity.
Power over public taste
This power in art does not only manifest itself in a directly political form. It is often more subtle; it reveals itself not only in the very choice of who will gain visibility, but above all in the way we decide what we consider valuable, “necessary for the masses,” appropriate. In this sense, every artist, curator, or institution has a certain kind of power: power over meaning, power over choice, and ultimately power over public taste, that is, over which aesthetic judgments are the right ones.
In classical aesthetic approaches – from Hume and Kant to Ingarden – aesthetic judgment is linked to individual experience of a given work, with Ingarden additionally distinguishing between aesthetic judgments and artistic judgments, the latter requiring special competence and knowledge of the field of art. Institutional theories (Danto, Dickie), on the other hand, take a step back: they ask not so much about how we evaluate a work, but who decides that a given object becomes a candidate for such evaluation in the first place. Bourdieu, in turn, argues that aesthetic and artistic judgments are deeply tied to class structure and serve to reproduce symbolic power. Feminist and poststructuralist interventions – from Nochlin to Rancière and Bishop – shift the focus even further towards the question of who even has access to being “judged” as an artist and whose judgments (whose taste) are considered important.
It is certainly worth doing two things here: first, to look at the emotions and accusations formulated by society, and second, to consider for whom art is created in the first place.
Audience fatigue
Looking at Damien Hirst’s career and his “dots,” spectacular auctions, and deliberate manipulation of market rules, Maurizio Cattelan’s banana stuck to the wall and its questionable longevity, or Banksy’s work that underwent controlled self-destruction in front of bidders, the contemporary audience may at times feel that the art world is constantly playing with their trust. In this emotional cacophony of reactions, it is easy to conclude that art has become a kind of “bottomless pit,” capable of absorbing almost anything.
This process, naturally, has its history: it begins with the multiplication of subsequent “isms” and a gradual departure from academic painting paradigms, only to be radically questioned in Dadaism. Traditional academic rigour was also, to a certain extent, a means of social support, which today, in an era of endless creative possibilities and systematic questioning of the axioms that allow the viewer to assign the status of a work of art to an object, is virtually impossible. Oscillating in the chaos and infinity of the repertoire of formal solutions can be incredibly frustrating, especially in the context of the often-repeated slogan: “anyone can be an artist.”
At the same time, there is still a fairly stable, “standard” art circuit, comprising a network of institutions, curators, competitions, and collections, which claims the right to regulate what becomes visible and enters the symbolic spotlight. At the same time, however, it is clear that audiences need and eagerly fetishise those who bypass this system, or at least pretend to do so (Banksy is a perfect example here). This further reinforces the sense of chaos: on the one hand, the art world demands trust in its selection procedures, while on the other, it itself produces figures of “outsiders,” rebellious authors whom the public instinctively trusts more than official experts and art institutions.
It is difficult to build trust in a field that, on the one hand, consistently violates its own rules and, on the other, has always been susceptible to social depreciation. Art has accompanied humans since prehistoric times, and yet it still faces the problem of systematising its own practices and emerging phenomena that negate the previous ones, elude definitions, and force their constant updating. In almost every field of art, the author’s participation in the creation of a work is no longer a prerequisite for its creation or completion.
More and more often, it is reduced to a conceptual gesture: the formulation of an idea, naming it, initiating a process or commissioning its execution. The creative process becomes fluid and involves multiple stages, while the boundaries between art, design, technology, and programming become blurred. We observe similar transformations in architecture, where working on a project increasingly resembles engineering or IT practice, using similar digital tools, strategies, and models of collaboration, as well as design, where there is a growing number of limited-edition collector’s items with reduced functionality, situated somewhere between everyday objects and works of art.
It is not uncommon for the architect or artist to be absent during the physical creation of the project, which is entrusted to specialised teams or technologies. The practice of ordering sculptures from the Carrara quarries or producing complex models delivered directly to the exhibition site clearly illustrates how deeply blurred the boundaries between creator and executor have become today. From Hirst, Koons, and Cattelan to many contemporary architects and artists, the transformation of the author’s role in the creative process is becoming increasingly apparent.
Effectiveness as a new expectation (towards art)
Simultaneously, expectations towards art are growing. While on the one hand, the strong ideal of its autonomy and freedom from utility persists, on the other, it is assigned various functions: from producing beauty, through destabilising existing perspectives, to initiating borderline experiences in viewers, which lead to a kind of “critical point” known from critical art practices. The concept of the “effectiveness” of art is also becoming increasingly common, though rarely precisely defined: it is unclear who would verify this effectiveness and based on what criteria.
The extensive system of labels – feminist, socially engaged, critical, radical art, etc., shows that we never stop projecting specific tasks and expectations onto art, which at the same time confirms that we still need something from it. From the viewer’s perspective, however, this generates yet another level of uncertainty: when art increasingly resorts to means from non-artistic fields in an attempt to achieve its assigned “effectiveness”, it may give the impression that it has limited confidence in its own autonomy and agency.
The paradoxes continue to pile up. On the one hand, there is a growing aversion to repetitiveness: to successive, increasingly predictable formal and theoretical clichés, which had their historical raison d’être when they defined significant turning points in the history of art and broadened the limits of perception and reflection. Nowadays, many exhibitions feature entire constellations of works resembling copies of copies, differing mainly in the narrative attributed to them in curatorial texts. The question of whether there is still room for something truly new in art, or whether, to quote Susan Sontag, all we can do is create new relationships with old forms, returns with new intensity.
The conflict between the centre and the periphery, between what is “professional” and what is “amateur,” reveals yet another tension here: someone always has power over the aesthetic education of society – over what enters circulation, gains visibility, and has the right to be seen.
So, for whom is art created today? For institutions that would not have a reason to exist without artists? For artists, whose work only becomes real when it comes into contact with the viewer? For the viewer, who is still often depreciated as “unqualified” to appreciate art, even though it is the viewer who largely sustains the entire system by buying tickets and, as a taxpayer, contributing to the budgets of institutions and the festivals and biennials they organise, which are co-financed from public funds? And at the same time, through their choices, presence and memory, the viewer decides what actually remains in the circulation of meanings?
In this constellation of actors co-creating the structure of the art world, we all need each other. However, what is striking is, firstly, the clear disproportion between symbolic and decision-making power, and secondly, the fact that the responsibility that comes with this power is rarely clearly attributed. It is dispersed between individuals, institutions, and mechanisms, so that when mistakes or abuses occur, it is difficult to identify the entity that can actually be held accountable.
The conflict between the centre and the periphery, between what is “professional” and what is “amateur,” reveals yet another tension here: someone always has power over the aesthetic education of society – over what enters circulation, gains visibility, and has the right to be seen.
Art will die more than just once
What happens when social expectations begin to differ significantly from what institutions offer? In such cases, violent reactions, gestures of rejection or protest can be interpreted as a form of compensation on the part of the audience, who have no real influence on what is presented and who is allowed to have their say. All the more so because not every social group has a real opportunity to find its place in the art world, neither as an audience nor as creators whose experiences and perspectives remain systematically underrepresented, and this is by no means a marginal phenomenon.
Discourses reveal, above all, social fears and emotions, such as those related to the scale of disparity and injustice in the art world. As Joanna Warsza notes in a conversation published in the book Skuteczność sztuki (The Effectiveness of Art), art today is “a sphere of exploitation and self-exploitation, abuse, speculation, and ruthless market mechanisms.” Quoting Gregory Sholette, Warsza reminds us that “about 95% of artists who have not been successful build an invisible foundation for the 5% who have succeeded.”
Perhaps the most difficult thing to accept is that, indeed, anyone can be an artist, which does not mean that everyone will become one, and that artistic or aesthetic judgments do not determine everything here. After all, not everyone can afford to be an artist.
Finally, it is worth asking yourself what you need from art, and whether you are able to accept that your definition of art does not have to, and most likely will not, coincide with someone else’s definition of art. It is also worth accepting that art will die more than once.
