‘Culture for Sale’: The Effects of Corporate Colonization on the UK Museum Sector

Abstract

We explain how ‘corporate colonization’ (Deetz, 1992), fuelled by economic austerity, claims public institutions for commercial interests. The 2008 financial crisis coupled with the subsequent austerity programme in the UK stimulated widespread public sector funding cuts. Consequently UK public institutions were forced to focus on short-term fundraising and cost-saving activities to survive. In parallel, corporate logics, strategies and discourses came to dominate the ways in which academics, officials and professionals debated public activities. This ideological shift profoundly affected public services as communal objectives became overshadowed by commercial imperatives. Drawing on in-depth interviews with senior staff, the paper demonstrates how retrenchment of external support in the museum sector has been uneven, resulting in three ideal types of corporate colonization being postulated – normalized, intensive and total. We outline how in practical terms museums are affected differentially under these forms. In the wake of redefining strategic priorities in the drive to corporatize core contributions, we describe how museums have resorted increasingly to a range of entrepreneurial practices in order to ‘sell’ their services. Ultimately we argue that the primary purpose of museums – conserving cultural artefacts – is being overshadowed progressively by the need to maximise short-term financial gain through corporate measures.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3 citations exist upstream.