Understanding Cultural Policy: Government and the Arts and Culture in the United States

This textbook provides an introduction to cultural policy in the US, enabling both students and practitioners to understand how government impacts the arts and culture.

Starting with an historical overview of why and how the US developed a national cultural policy, the book goes on to trace the contemporary system of national, state, and local arts and cultural agencies through which that policy is put into practice. Readers are provided both in-depth frameworks for conceptualizing how gover...