Museums in Utility-Enhancing Consumption

Ryan Charlie
New School for Social Research
Draft: 12/16/2013

II The Role of Museums in Utility-Enhancing Consumption and Relatedly an Empirical Study of Museums in the USA1

II.1 Introduction II.1.1 Introduction to Research and Method II.1.2 Introduction to Economics of Museums II.1.3 Consumption and “The Finer Things in Life” II.2 Relevant Issues in the Political Economy of Art Museums II.2.1 Tax Exemptions for Not-for-Profit Organizations II.2.2 Museums and The Market II.2.3 Is Art Really for the Rich and Should We Care? II.3 The Difficulty in Measuring Museum Performance II.4 Generational Equity and Art Museums II.4.1 Current-Generation Equity and Preference- Formation for Art as Welfare Enhancing II.4.2 The “Price Gap” for Art II.5 Survey Methodology and Results II.5.1 The “Top” Museums in the USA II.5.2 The Investment Rate for Current Generation Equity- Creation through Education II.5.3 On Museum Finance and the Great Recession II.6 Summary of Results II.6.1 Further Research Bibliography
Appendix: Notes on Data Methodology
Chapter 2
The Role of Museums in Welfare-Enhancing Consumption and Relatedly an Empirical Study of Museums in the USA

II.1 Introduction

II.1.1 Introduction to Research and Method

The theme of this essay is the economics of museums. There are two main related research subthemes forming the research question. The first is consumer theory and human flourishing. Tibor Scitovsky (1976 and 1988) writes that people consume too much for comfort and not enough for novelty, by which he means the finer arts, because there is the risk of

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