Research

Other Research

Impact Study-Garfield Park Conservatory Chihuly Show

Principal Investigator: Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Assistant Professor, Political Science Department, and Center for the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture.

Since its opening last winter, the "Chihuly in the Park: A Garden of Glass" exhibit at the Garfield Park Conservatory has drawn huge crowds from across the city and the country to the economically devastated west side neighborhood. The unexpected success of this show points to a potential significant role for the arts in community development.

Professor Harris-Lacewell's study examines the economic and social impact of the exhibit on the Garfield Park neighborhood and development trends in Chicago. How do local residents perceive the show and its influence on their community? How do visitors from outside the neighborhood perceive Garfield Park, and has that perception been affected by their experience at the Conservatory? And, finally, what lessons can this exhibit provide city and arts planners looking to integrate arts and cultural projects into community development initiatives?

The project consists of two phases. In the completed first phase, the research team led by Professor Harris-Lacewell conducted on-site interviews with Conservatory visitors, and held focus groups composed of local residents and visitors. The team also carried out an analysis of media coverage of Garfield Park during the Chihuly exhibition, and researched the history of development efforts in the area. Professor Harris-Lacewell presented the results of Phase One at the Cultural Policy Center's downtown discussion series to an audience of over 50 arts professionals, arts funders, and city planners. She has also drafted a report of the first phase, "Broken Glass: A Community Impact Study of the Chihuly Exhibit in Garfield Park, Chicago".

The second phase of the project, for which we are currently seeking funding, will consist of leadership interviews with key exhibition planners from the Conservatory, the Boeing Corporation, the Chicago Park District, and the City; an examination of economic indicators over a period before and after the event; a public opinion survey to assess the longer-term impact of the Chihuly exhibit on the constituency of Conservatory attendees and public attitudes toward the Garfield Park neighborhood; and comparative study of another arts-based community development effort in another area of Chicago.

Social Capital and Public Support for the Arts

Principal Investigator: Jeffrey Milyo, Assistant Professor, Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies

Several influential social scientists have argued that social capital is an important determinant of support for government programs, but this claim has not been applied to public support for the arts and artistic expression. This project is the first empirical investigation of the extent to which social capital is a determinant of support for the arts, using statistical analysis to identify the independent effect of social capital on individual opinions regarding government and other types of funding for the arts.

Professor Milyo will exploit some of the unique features of the General Social Survey to conduct this analysis. Much of the research on social capital makes use of the GSS, since it contains several questions pertaining to voluntary associations, social connectedness and social trust; responses to these types of questions have been used to construct measures of individual and state level proxies for social capital. The GSS also contains several questions about support for the arts in 1998, as well as three separate waves of questions on support for government funding of the arts (between 1985 and 1996). The GSS also contains a rich array of socioeconomic and demographic data (e.g., age, education, income, race, marital status, political ideology, etc.) that can be used as control variables in the multivariate statistical analysis. More importantly, the GSS also contains information on homeownership, religion and other variables that are often cited as important determinants of social capital itself; these variables can then be used as "instruments" to identify the direct and independent treatment effect of social capital on support for the arts.

Debating the Art Museum: An Anthology

Principal Investigator: Martha Ward, Associate Professor, Department of Art History

This anthology is devoted to key debates that occurred between the Enlightenment and World War II regarding the purposes and practices of art museums, and that still have relevance for current concerns. Among the topics likely to be included are: (1) debates about the Napoleonic confiscations from Italy and the effects of removing works from their original contexts; (2) responses to the Elgin marbles and their installation in the British Museum; (3) texts concerning how the history of art should be accommodated or represented through architectural design (Schinkel and Berlin); (4) definitions of the purpose of a decorative arts museum in an industrial age (South Kensington in the 1850s); (5) the criteria for separating anthropological collections from artistic ones (the Louvre and Trocadero in the 1880s); (6) debates over whether casts and reproductions should have a place in art museums (the Boston "Cast Debate" from 1902); (7) debates about whether museological practice should be shaped as a response to mass media (Huyghe and France in the 1930s). These documents, some of which are rare and have never been translated, will spur research across national boundaries and provide exciting materials for teaching the history of museums in a comparative frame.

The Program of State Cultural Policy Reviews

Principal Investigator: J. Mark Schuster, Cultural Policy Center visiting professor, 2001-2002; MIT Professor of Urban Cultural Policy

State-level support is the most significant source of direct government aid to the arts and humanities in the U.S. Yet the policies underpinning that support have never been systematically studied. This project will document, analyze, and compare the policies of a number of representative states. Initial planning for this project was sponsored by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Detailed information on the pilot study of Washington state, funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, can be found at the project overview page.

Measuring the Health of Our Common Culture

Principal Investigator: Don Coursey, Ameritech Professor, Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies

How do we measure the value of cultural experience? How can we meaningfully make comparisons between cultural goods and the many other things in which we invest time and money? Building on the contingent valuation methodology (CVM) developed in environmental economics to measure the value of non-market goods, this project aims to develop a survey instrument to measure public valuation of the arts and culture in the broadest sense. Such measures will enable advocates to provide concrete evidence for the intangible but nonetheless real value of the arts and humanities.

This project has been sponsored by generous grants from the Chauncey and Marion D. McCormick Foundation. For more information about the project, see the most recent project update. A closed-door planning conference funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to examine the current state of applications of the contingent valuation method was held in early February, 2002. Papers are posted on the conference site. Also see the 2001-02 Cultural Policy Workshop for papers on CVM.

Measuring Aesthetic Responses

Principal Investigator: Colm O'Muircheartaigh, VP for Statistics and Methodology, National Opinion Research Center, and professor at the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies

Underlying the justification for public funding of the arts is the conviction that experiencing art is an intrinsically beneficial activity for the individual. Nevertheless, attempts to capture the nature of this experience in a quantitatively measurable way have been relatively unsuccessful. Many artists and art connoisseurs decry the notion of quantitative measurement of such a qualitative experience, and simply cannot believe that any meaningful measurement is possible. As a result, measurement is often restricted to a simple breakdown of attendance, or personal interviews, the results of which are difficult to generalize. Each of these tools has a place in the public measurement of aesthetic experience, but both fail to bring to bear the potential of social science measurement theories and methods. This project aims to improve the measurement of aesthetic appreciation by combining the insights of artists and art experts with the theoretical constructs of psychology and philosophy using the measurement methodologies of quantitative social science.

Initial planning for this project has been sponsored by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. For more information about this project, see the most recent project update. Initial research has identified a number of possible approaches, and a closed-door conference to plan the next phase of the project was held in December, 2001. Transcripts of that conference will be posted on this site.

Our Current Research

Sponsored Research - Affiliated Faculty

Past RFPs