Museums and Entrepreneurship: The Effects of Capitalising on Culture in the 21st Century

Museums and Entrepreneurship: The Effects of Capitalising on Culture in the 21st Century addresses the largely under-examined impact that different entrepreneurial endeavours have on museum practices today.

It identifies an entrepreneurial turn in today’s neoliberal context and critically evaluates how this turn redefines museums in organisational, conceptual and empirical terms. It assesses the challenges that different types of museums face, examining how they are conceptualised, managed and experienced in order to remain financially viable while also remaining relevant to the communities they should serve. It brings to the fore the dynamic relationships formed across corporate sponsors, private collectors, cultural administrators and local communities that shape today’s museum practices in a global context. Evidence-based in its approach and with case studies from Europe, the United States, South America and China, this volume engages with entrepreneurship across theory and practice and combines perspectives from museum studies, curating, exhibition design, business and management.

Shedding new light on discussions around cultural branding, sponsorship, the politics of display and experience economy, and highlighting the importance of resilience, decolonisation and social responsibility, Museums and Entrepreneurship is essential reading for students and researchers in museum and heritage studies, curatorial studies, arts and heritage management and business.

Eve Kalyva is an art historian, museum educator and lecturer at the University of Kent. Her interdisciplinary research interests span conceptual and contemporary art, image and text relations, social semiotics, activism, exhibition design, decolonial practices and the Global South, with a regional focus on Latin America. At Kent, she leads the research project Decolonial Practices in Art and Culture.

Iro Katsaridou is currently Director of the MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography. She was previously a curator at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki. Iro has taught art history and museum studies in several universities in Greece, has participated in international conferences, and has published contributions in journals, collective volumes, and exhibition catalogues. Her research interests focus on photography (historical and contemporary), art and politics, and socially engaged art history as implemented in museum practices.

Pamela Bianchi is a professor in art history at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville (ENSAPB) and at the École Supérieure dʼArt et Design in Toulon (ESADtpm). She specialises in the relationship between art, architecture and exhibition design. Since 2013, she has been an affiliated researcher at the Paris 8 University (AI-AC).