Robert Hewison

Britain began the twenty-first century convinced of its creativity. Throughout the New Labour era, the visual and performing arts, museums and galleries, were ceaselessly promoted as a stimulus to national economic revival, a post-industrial revolution where spending on culture would solve everything, from national decline to crime. Tony Blair heralded it a “golden age.” Yet despite huge investment, the audience for the arts remained a privileged minority. So what went wrong? In Cultural Capital, leading historian Robert Hewison gives an in-depth account of how creative Britain lost its way. From Cool Britannia and the Millennium Dome to the Olympics and beyond, he shows how culture became a commodity, and how target-obsessed managerialism stifled creativity. In response to the failures of New Labour and the austerity measures of the Coalition government, Hewison argues for a new relationship between politics and the arts.

The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain

Cultural Capital

This was first published in 2000: A study of John Ruskin's engagement with art and architecture as a critic, a patron and a teacher. It offers insights into both his writings and the visual economy of the Victorian world. Each essay examines Ruskin's relationship with an individual artist or a distinct aspect of art practice. J.M.W. Turner, D.G. Rossetti, W. Holman Hunt and E. Burne-Jones are among those artists discussed whose personal relationships with Ruskin affected his critical writing. Ruskin's attitude to women artists and his approach to the teaching of art are given special attention.

Studies in the Victorian Visual Economy

Ruskin's Artists

Culture in the Cold War, 1945-60

In Anger

British Culture in the Cold War, 1945-60

First published in 1986, Too Much records the tumultuous period between 1960 and 1975 when, more than at any other time in history, the arts were a battleground for the conflicting forces of social change. With the new affluence of the Sixties the cultural conformism of the previous decade was rejected in favour of new forms of expression. Pop Art, pop music, fringe theatre and performance poetry helped to create the semi-mythological image of ‘Swinging London.’ The liberation ethic was feted as it masked the insecurities of a society in decline but, as a real political challenge to the status quo, it also led to conflict. The confrontation between official culture and the underground came in 1968, a year with its own mythical resonance. This book will be of interest to students of art, media studies and cultural studies.

Art and Society in the Sixties 1960-75

Too Much

John Holden

Leadership has never been more important to the cultural industries. The arts, together with museums and heritage sites, play a vital part in keeping economies going, and, more importantly, in making life worth living. People in the sector face a constant challenge to find support for their organizations and to promote the value of culture. Leadership and management skills are needed to meet the mission of creative arts and cultural organizations, and to generate the income that underpins success. The problem is, where can you learn these essential skills? The Cultural Leadership Handbook written by Robert Hewison and John Holden, both prime movers in pioneering cultural leadership programmes, defines the specific challenges in the cultural sector and enables arts leaders to move from 'just' administration to becoming cultural entrepreneurs, turning good ideas into good business. This book is intended for anyone with a professional or academic interest anywhere in the cultural sector, anywhere in the world. It will give you the edge, enabling to you to show creative leadership at any level in a cultural organization, regardless of whether your particular interest is the performing arts, museums and art galleries, heritage, publishing, films, broadcasting or new media.

How to Run a Creative Organization

The Cultural Leadership Handbook

Culture and Consensus, first published in 1995 and a revised edition in 1997, explores the history of the relationship between politics and the arts in Britain since 1940, and shows how the search for a secure sense of English identity has been reflected in official and unofficial attitudes to the arts, architecture, landscape and other emblems of national significance. Illustrating his argument with a series of detailed case histories, Robert Hewison analyses how Britain’s cultural life has reached its present enfeebled condition and suggests a way forward. This book will be of interest to students of art and cultural studies.

England, Art and Politics since 1940

Culture and Consensus (Routledge Revivals)

Chris Orr MBE RA is one of Britains foremost printmakers. In this definitive book he and Robert Hewison explore his remarkable printmaking career, from his early experiments as a student in the 1960s, when he first discovered how etching could enhance his drawing, to his later innovations in lithography, silkscreen and digital printing, and his ingenious use of long-forgotten processes. Hewison also considers the significant contribution that Orr has made to printmaking as a teacher, first at Cardiff College of Art and then in London at Central St Martins and the Royal College of Art, where he was Professor of Printmaking from 1998 to 2008. Illustrated with over 150 of Orrs theatrical, witty and wilfully allusive prints, this book looks for the first time in depth at the gloriously original output of a ceaseless inventor. The book will also be published in a limited edition containing a specially made print signed by the artist.

The Making of Things

Chris Orr

Culture and Consensus presents the history of the relationship between politics and the arts in Britain since 1940, showing how the search for a secure sense of English identity has been reflected in official and unofficial attitudes to the arts, architecture, landscape and other emblems of national significance.

Robert Hewison

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