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This thesis presents a qualitative investigation of the influence of the art institution on the disposition and artistic allegiances of its audiences through an in-depth study of the Tate Gallery and its members. In the The Love of Art Bourdieu and Darbel (1991) emphasise the homology between the dominant social position and disposition of the committed art lover, and the presentation of the art institution. There is no audience, they said, more 'devoted' to the institution than the Society of Friends. How far this devotion translates into the shaping of practices and taste among this audience, and to what extent it is complicated by other factors, particularly social background, social trajectory, occupation and education, is a key question this thesis addresses. This research shows that change in the social composition and artistic allegiances of the membership audience can be seen as indicative of change within the institution and its position in the field. It adopts a field analytical approach and uses a combination of an institutional analysis of the Tate Gallery and semi structured interviews with the members and the staff of the Tate Gallery to investigate their relationship. This thesis updates understanding of this important but often neglected audience. The members are not a homogenous social group, but have changed within the context of aneo-liberal agenda that dominated the development of cultural policy in the UK after 1997. Evidence from this research suggests that over the last 10 years the Tate Gallery has acted as a vehicle for the distinction strategies of cultural intermediaries, adding to the debate around the ability of the art field to constantly create new forms of distinction that work to assert and preserve power.

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This thesis examines the conceptualization of the visitor within the discursive construction of the contemporary public art museum. It takes the rhetorical formulation of the interaction between the theorized visitor figure and the discursively rendered museum to constitute the ‘visit’. This work argues that the position of the visitor within museum discourse has radically shifted in the past generation; the primary claim being that the visit is reconceived as a personally customizable experience less oriented toward the transfer of information from the curator (regarded as expert and educator) to the visitor figure (regarded as ignorant pupil), and more oriented toward meeting the particular needs and preferences of the visitor. This conception currently appears in museum discourse and in the minds of influential actors who shape this discourse. To analyze this claim, this thesis draws on the institutionalization of the visit via a case study of the Tate Modern museum, which provides the primary empirical evidence demonstrating the above claim. The resulting study relates the questions, structure, and findings of a systematic investigation into the historical, social, and museological conditions necessary to an institutionally manifested personalized, visitor-centered visit. The conceptual development of the visitor figure is traced through implicit accounts of the visit within academic studies of the museum, institutional records, marketing reports, advertisements, and the public discourse convened around Tate Modern’s opening thematic displays that served as an extension of Tate’s marketing and audience development programs. This visitor figure is now coextensive with and conditioned by a neoliberal participatory agenda that trades on the notion of personal agency and enlightened cultural consumption, which is, in turn, undergirded and conditioned by the intertwined forces of consumerism, marketing, and branding.

This thesis describes and examines curatorial approaches and models of institutional practice which have emerged as a response to transformations in contemporary art, particularly as engendered by new media art and socially engaged practices, as well as wider changes regarding the role and functioning of culture in contemporary society. Focusing on institutional and curatorial praxis at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool – the first purpose built gallery for presenting new media art in the UK – this study examines practicalities and challenges of new institutional and curatorial formats in the context of critical debates about the role and shape of art institutions, new models of artistic and curatorial practice, as well as wider socio-political and economic aspects of cultural management. The thesis is a result of collaborative research conducted at FACT, which included an intense period of practical involvement in FACT’s operations through the co-curating of Turning FACT Inside Out exhibition, which celebrated the 10th anniversary of the FACT building. Combining different methodological tools including curatorial practice, participant observation, interviews and case studies, this research gives behind the scenes insight into FACT’s programming, particularly the modes of production and curatorial practice. It demonstrates how curatorial and production approaches develop within a particular institutional framework and how this institutional framework, in turn, influences the practice of curators. The research examines both advantages and limitations of particular institutional and curatorial models of working while providing insight into different factors shaping institutional agendas as well as complexities and contingencies of cultural production and management.  The analysis of FACT’s curatorial practice described and examined different approaches with the most distinct ones being context-responsive, durational and collaborative curatorial ways of working. With regard to institutional practice, the findings indicate that FACT shares many similarities with institutional models developed within new media centers and the models of art institutions proposed by new institutionalism. The analysis indicates that those curatorial and institutional models and ways of working – although not without their challenges – provide suitable frameworks for supporting a wide range of artistic practices, emerging from socially engaged and new media art. The study also concludes that those models of working, as examined in the context of FACT, imply a shift in the role of the curator to that of the producer, with particular emphasis on delivery tasks and production of content rather than context. Findings also suggest that economic aspects will play a significant role in defining the future shape of art institutions, which will need to develop strategies towards sustainable business models including flexible employment structures and project-based models of working. These come with a danger of the institution being too delivery focused and loosing sight of its role as a knowledge producer. The flexible and cost effective employment structure may also lead to the dissipation of the institutional knowledge base while contributing to the already precarious labour conditions in the arts.