The Post-Cultural State

The bureaucracies that govern cultural life today are fundamentally uninterested in cultivating any proper sense of what art is, what it is ‘for’, and how new creations converse with the canon. We are governed by a post-cultural state, a regime in which art is increasingly mediated through managerialism. The post-cultural state prides itself on ‘access’ and ‘impact’, while culture itself withers on the vine. When the state and its great museums cease to act as reliable stewards, the result is significant material loss: works stolen, vandalised, or left to decay. In theory, the state still funds and celebrates culture, but only insofar as it justifies cultural ‘performance’ in terms of economics or ‘outputs’. It is a triumph of management over meaning.