The Business of Museum Ethics and Sponsorship Relationships

The Business of Museum Ethics and Sponsorship Relationships
by Stefanie Little
11 August, 2006

The shift from governmental sponsorship to mainly private corporate sponsorship of art museums has created huge areas of ethical conflict and grey areas of working practices within the working environment of art museums. As corporate sponsors and private sponsors seemingly take control of decision making processes regarding such things as exhibitions, the need or demand for a stronger enforcement of an explicit code of ethics within museums has been voiced from people within the arts industry and other sources. The increasing pressure for art museums to reach out to corporate sponsors for financial support has created the need to meet the market oriented goals of corporations and sponsors, often compromising the integrity and goals of the art museums as exhibitions tend to increasingly serve more the purpose of public relations rather than art and education for the public per se.

This case study is going to utilise the internet to see how strong the resonance of ethics and museum autonomy is in regards to sponsorship relations and what suggestions are made within online resources to tackle this issue. Another research emphasis is whether museums currently employ strategies to counter-balance the power of the sponsor. I will also look at some of the homepages of major Australian, American and English art museums in order to assess whether these museums have produced a written ethical code of conduct to which they submit themselves. From this information I can draw conclusions as to what function museum ethics may have within a museum and if museums appear to be interested in adapting such standards. The homepages of the museums will also be analysed to see if the predominant exhibition type is indeed the blockbuster, as the blockbuster exhibition is especially favoured by corporate sponsors for advertising and publicity. This will allow me to draw some speculative conclusions as to whether sponsors are exerting an influence over museums' overall exhibition output and type. This information will tie in with the case study’s focal point on how a museum can retain autonomy in regards to the influence of the sponsor.

http://icom.museum/
International Code of Ethics for museums.

http://www.aam-us.org/museumresources/ethics/coe.cfm
The American Association of Museums (AAM) Code of Ethics

http://www.museumsassociation.org/asset_arena/text/cs/code_of_ethics.pdf
The Museums Association UK Ethical Principles & Code of Ethics

http://www.museumsaustralia.org.au/aboutus.php?pageID=21&fileName=&dispM...
Museums Australia, Inc Code of Ethics

http://www.afpnet.org/ethics/guidelines_code_standards
Association of Fundraising Professionals Code of Ethical Principles for Professional Practice

http://www.nga.gov.au/Director/Previous/Kennedy/musethics.htm
Article written by Brian Kennedy about museum ethics and the Saatchi exhibition scandal.

http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/ethics.html
Smithsonian Institution Archives and references to various codes of ethics

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/charles_saa...
New York Times page with links to articles dealing with the Sensation exhibition

URL:http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/bizart/2006/08/the_business_of_museum_ethics.html#more