Governmental Subsidy and Curatorial Practice - A study in the curatorial practice of nonprofit art organizations in Taiwan from 2010 to 2019

The nonprofit art organizations have been in a love-hate relationship with the public funds for a long time. On the one hand, they much rely on the public funds to survive and to maintain the legitimacy within society. On the other hand, they strive to ensure autonomy in deciding the presented cultural production. This article adopts the perspectives of new-institutionalism to explore the constantly interactive relationships between governmental subsidies and curatorial practice. The curatorial practice serves not merely as individual agents’ manipulative reactions to institutions but also as the visualization of the negotiation between the two. In particular, the curatorial practice of nonprofit art organizations is the best place to observe such a negotiation as the public funds usually act as their main financial backers. This research examines the governmental subsidies granted by the National Cultural and Arts Foundation and the curatorial practice of the three nonprofit art organizations in Taiwan from 2010 to 2019 to understand the characteristics that win the favor of the public purse. The results suggest that there are four characteristics in curatorial practice that decisively attract the state’s financial support, including the audience scalability, content interactivity, value transportability, and resource expandability.