Position

Institutional Theory of Art

Something is a work of art when a practice with the authority to do so confers that status on it, not because of any property it displays.

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Classification

Position level
specific
Domains
Aesthetics

Overview

The institutional account answers a difficulty that defeated every attempt to name a visible feature common to all art: a urinal placed in a gallery and an identical one in a plumbing supply differ in no perceptible respect, yet only one is a work. On George Dickie's account, what separates them is a status conferred by people acting on behalf of the artworld — artists, curators, audiences — rather than anything in the object. Dickie took the word "artworld" from Arthur Danto, who meant something else by it: a background of art theory and art history that lets an object be seen as art, not a body that confers status, and Danto rejected the institutional reading.

This locates art in a social fact and accepts the consequence, which its critics press hardest: on this view the artworld can confer the status on anything at all, and the theory says nothing about whether it was right to.

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