Developing a computer aided design tool for inclusive design

The purpose of this study was to investigate age-related changes in the performance of a range of movement tasks for integration into a computer aided design (CAD) tool for use in inclusive design

A Brave Look at Disadvantage, Black Youth, and Culture: Patterson and Fosse’s The Cultural Matrix

This article provides a review of The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, edited by Orlando Patterson with Ethan Fosse (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2015. ISBN: 978-0-674-72875-2, cloth, £33.95). In the collection, Patterson and Fosse bring together theoretical and empirical work that focuses on culture and disadvantage in the African-American community. This book is important. It is packed with fresh insights and excellent scholarship, and it grasps thorny issues: the role of culture in the persistence of disadvantage and the features of culture that ameliorate disadvantage or that allow people to resist, reduce, or manage its concomitants, such as neighbourhood violence. The book’s authors offer careful, nuanced treatments of these topics, while always showing a profound respect for the disadvantaged subjects of the research. However, in bringing together concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘poverty’, the book is also likely to spark debate

Cultural Policy Effects on the Marketing Orientation in London Art Museums

This chapter examines marketization in museums, focusing on four major London art museums, the British Museum, the National Gallery, Tate, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The paper considers two ways to understand marketization: first, marketization as the increased exposure of museums to the marketplace, a consequence of changes in cultural policy, and second, marketization as the increased adoption by museums of marketing tools from business, which is a logical consequence of the first sense of marketization, exposure to the marketplace. British cultural policy has profoundly affected the market-orientation of state-supported museums in the United Kingdom, especially National Museums which receive funding from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Thus in many ways marketization in the supported arts sector can be seen as a public policy effect

Views of the Neighbourhood: A Photo-Elicitation Study of the Built Environment

Drawing on a participant-centred, photo-elicitation study of the built environment in three neighbourhoods, I discuss how people see their neighbourhoods, both in the visual and aesthetic sense, and also how they view (metaphorically) their local surroundings. Participants took part in photo-elicitation interviews and, previously, in standard (verbal- only) semi-structured interviews. Results suggest that people care about their neighbourhoods and value local amenities, attractive houses, public art, and trees, greenery and open spaces. They are concerned about such mundane issues as litter and poorly kept properties, which they find unattractive. Pictures of narrow alleyways and deserted areas were prevalent in connection with fear and vulnerability. I suggest that as participants construct their views of the built environment, they situate their actual neighbourhoods against idealised ‘imagined’ neighbourhoods, and both the actual surroundings and the idealised construction play into their views of their own place. In addition, it is clear that when participants are asked to take photographs of their neighbourhoods, they think visually. Consequently, participants enact their responses differently in visual research than they do in verbal-only research

Public Institutions of “High” Culture

This chapter focuses on institutions that distribute “high” culture via public or quasi-public mechanisms. High culture includes (Western) fine arts, such as classical and contemporary visual arts, opera, classical music, and ballet. The chapter covers art museums, symphony orchestras, and opera, drama, and dance companies, organizations comprising what is known as the “supported arts sector” because they are reliant to some degree on public (governmental) funding for their continued operation. After noting some difficulties with the concept of high culture, the chapter outlines the organizational forms used to distribute high culture, which include nonprofit and non-governmental organizations, and government agencies. The chapter then turns to look at the public funding of fine arts institutions and considers several issues facing these institutions, including the conflict among missions and the effects of various external pressures. The chapter concludes with a discussion of topics that may be fruitful in the continuing study of public institutions of high culture

Museums and Money: The Impact of Funding on Exhibitions, Scholarship, and Management

Recent controversies over politically sensitive or allegedly pornographic museum exhibitions have called attention to the sources of funding, public and private, of museums and other cultural organizations. Should funders have a say in what gets exhibited by a museum? Would this constitute censorship or merely be a reasonable restraint over the way public or corporate funds are used? While funding for the arts was shifting from individuals to institutions, including the federal government, did the mission and management of museums change? Museums & Money looks at thirty large art museums and how they have been affected by the changing patterns of funding for the arts in America over the past thirty-five years. Full of insights into the world of arts organizations, Victoria Alexander's study raises important cultural questions as well, with far-reaching implications for the way art is defined, produced, and presented in contemporary America

Sociology of the Arts: Exploring Fine and Popular Forms

This is a comprehensive overview of the sociology of art and an authoritative work of scholarship by a leading expert in the field. The international selection of perspectives, empirical research, and case studies makes this book essential for teaching and studying the sociology of art. • Synthesizes the various theoretical models of art sociology. • Provides empirical examples of books, films, television shows, dance, and music, as well as exemplars of sociological work on the arts. • Discusses works from both fine and popular ends of the cultural spectrum. • Explores how art is created, distributed, received, consumed, and used by people who experience it

TripAdvisor Reviews of London Museums: A New Approach to Understanding Visitors

The digital revolution has affected museums in many ways, both directly and indirectly. A major external change is the rise of user-written reviews; that is, reviews written by museum visitors and posted on the Internet. User-generated reviews pose challenges to museums, as they are publicly available and largely outside the control of museums. This article discusses research on reviews of accredited museums in London. The authors’ data set consists of all reviews written about 88 museums that were posted on TripAdvisor during 2014, a total of 22,940 reviews. Using a technique called topic modelling, they describe 19 themes in reviewers’ stories of their visits. The authors find that museum visitors pay attention to the ancillary aspects of their visit: queues, cost, food service, toilets, and activities for children. They make fewer comments on the cultural side of the museum experience. However, these cultural aspects do matter and are associated with positive reviews. The authors argue that reviewers consider museums as part of a wider leisure sector. They close with a discussion of the implications of their study for museum management and assess the usefulness of user-generated content as a source of data on museum visitors

Art at the Crossroads: The Arts in Society and the Sociology of Art

The arts face a number of challenges in the 21st century brought about by various factors. These include rapid expansion of art markets at an international level, the impact of economic restructuring in public funding for the arts, the increasing dominance of neoliberal models of institutional and organizational success, changes in the definition of artistic work and artistic identity, and changes in the definition of audiences and new modes of arts participation in the face of technological innovations in communication technologies. In this paper, we identify and analyze six major themes central to the arts and the sociology of art: the marginalization of the arts in society and sociology, art and the state, arts institutions and organizations, artists and audiences, and issues of meaning and measurement. We argue that the arts and arts scholarship face a crossroads in the current environment. We conclude with some observations about directions for future research

Scandal and the Work of Art: The Nude in an Aesthetically Inflected Sociology of the Arts

American sociologists working in the production perspective have produced a rich body of work on systems of aesthetic-cultural production, distribution, and consumption, but they have paid relatively little attention to the work of art. Aligning with new sociological work that takes the work of art seriously, this article contributes to an aesthetically inflected sociology of the arts: research that includes the work of art as an integral part of the analysis. Substantively, we examine a nineteenth-century scandal surrounding paintings of nudes. We show that the work of art constitutes crucial evidence for understanding arts scandals. Artworks are connected with social and aesthetic issues by means of their pictorial elements, which are viewed by a public through historically situated “period eyes.” Each of these elements is needed to spark an arts controversy, and all must be studied in order to understand them