Questions: George Dickie: Institutional Theory of Art

Question 1

A master woodcarver in an isolated community creates an intricately beautiful sculpture. It is never displayed in a gallery, never reviewed by critics, and no member of the artworld encounters it. According to Dickie's institutional theory, is it art?

• A. Yes — its aesthetic beauty and skilled craftsmanship qualify it as art regardless of institutional context
• B. Yes — the artist's intention to create something for appreciation is sufficient for art status
• C. No — art status requires conferral by persons acting within the artworld; without institutional recognition, it remains a mere artifact
• D. No — only objects displayed in accredited museums qualify as art under institutional theory

Answer: (C)

For Dickie, what makes something art is not its intrinsic properties (beauty, skill, intention) but institutional conferral — being presented as a candidate for appreciation within the network of artworld practices. An object never placed in that institutional circuit, however beautiful, has not had art status conferred upon it. Option B is the most tempting wrong answer: intention alone is not sufficient in Dickie's account — the object must actually enter the institutional network.

Question 2

Dickie acknowledges his theory is circular — art is what the artworld accepts, and the artworld is the institution dealing with art. He argues this circularity is not 'vicious.' What is his best defense?

• A. The circularity disappears once we define 'artworld' independently of the concept of art
• B. Social institutions genuinely are self-defining — the roles and practices constitute each other, just as money is defined by the banking system that uses it
• C. The circularity is only apparent; formal artworld membership criteria break the loop
• D. Aesthetic experience provides an independent anchor that resolves the circularity

Answer: (B)

Dickie argues the circularity is not vicious because it mirrors the structure of all social institutions. Currency is defined by the financial system that treats it as currency; legal status is conferred by the legal system. The artworld is similarly a network of mutually constituting roles (artists, critics, museums, audiences) — each defined partly in terms of the others. This is institutional interdependence, not a logical fallacy. Option D is wrong because Dickie explicitly rejects aesthetic experience as the foundation of art status.

Question 3

According to Dickie's institutional theory, an object qualifies as art primarily because of its aesthetic properties — beauty, expressiveness, or formal integrity.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

False. This is precisely what institutional theory rejects. Dickie's central argument is that no aesthetic property is necessary or sufficient for art status. An object with zero aesthetic interest can be art if properly placed in the artworld (Duchamp's urinal), while a supremely beautiful object may not be art if it has never entered the institutional circuit. The theory grounds art classification in social practice, not intrinsic properties.

Question 4

Dickie's institutional theory classifies what counts as art without making claims about what makes art good — institutional recognition confers art status but not art quality.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

True. This is one of Dickie's explicit responses to the charge that institutional theory is too permissive. Yes, the institution can confer art status on anything — but that is a claim about classification, not evaluation. Bad art is still art. Dickie distinguishes the question 'Is this art?' (answered by institutional placement) from 'Is this good art?' (answered by aesthetic evaluation). The theory is a theory of art classification, not art criticism.

Question 5

What advantage does institutional theory have over traditional definitions of art such as art-as-imitation, art-as-expression, or art-as-significant-form?

Model answer: Traditional definitions each specify a necessary aesthetic property, which means they fail to classify works that deliberately reject that property. Art-as-imitation excludes abstract painting; art-as-expression excludes minimalism; art-as-significant-form excludes conceptual art with no formal interest. Institutional theory avoids this problem entirely by requiring no particular aesthetic property — only that the work be placed within the artworld network. It can accommodate found objects, conceptual pieces, and anti-aesthetic works without strain, precisely because institutional placement is a social act, not a claim about what the object looks or feels like.

This is the theory's primary motivation and its strongest selling point. Each new avant-garde movement — Dada, conceptual art, earth art, institutional critique — posed a problem for property-based definitions. Institutional theory handles these cases as easily as traditional painting, which is why it remains influential despite the circularity objection.