Washington & the Arts: Patronage, Policy, and Diversity
Taught by Professor Anne Rasmussen
- 3 Credits
DC Winter Seminars welcomes Professor Anne Rasmussen to lead the Washington & the Arts: Patronage, Policy, and Diversity Seminar!
This course investigates the role of the arts in the nation’s capital city through a study of some of its most important arts institutions. Through daily fieldtrips and an introduction to the city’s experts in the business of art, culture, and education, we consider arts policy, programming, production, patronage, education, marketing, and commodification, against the backdrop of diversity, equity, and inclusivity. In addition to thinking about the city’s flagship institutions – the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution Museums, the Library of Congress, and the National Endowment for the Arts – we consider artists, audiences, and neighborhoods, contexts for performance, the curation and presentation of histories and cultures, issues of representation, communities and individuals, power and money, and the way in which these processes and entities are mapped onto the arts in the nation’s capital and beyond. We aim to visit each place and meet each person with an open mind and a critical eye toward the role of the arts in our world and the ways in which culture is and has been created, framed, sold, disseminated, nurtured, and even in some cases, ignored or abandoned. Students interested in the arts, whether as performers, presenters, and creators, or working in marketing, finance, and entrepreneurship, are encouraged to join our seminar, which promises to be an opportunity to explore the city with a fresh agenda, consider possible internships for the future, and imagine promising career paths.
