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Artists, Patrons, and the Public: Why Culture Changes

by Barry Lord and Gail Dexter Lord
Amazon US
$58.00
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Amazon CA
$70.55
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Amazon UK
£27.95
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Rowman & Littlefield
$58.00
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In their new book, Barry and Gail Lord focus their two lifetimes of international experience working in the cultural sector on the challenging questions of why and how culture changes. They situate their discourse on aesthetic culture within a broad and inclusive definition of culture in relation to material, physical and socio-political cultures.

This book is intended for artists, students, and teachers of art history, museum studies, cultural studies, and philosophy, and for cultural workers in all media and disciplines. It is above all intended for those who think of themselves first as audience because we are all participants in cultural change.


About The Authors

Barry Lord, Co-Founder and Co-President of Lord Cultural Resources, is internationally known as one of the world’s leading museum planners. Educated at McMaster and Harvard Universities. Barry co-founded Lord Cultural Resources with his wife Gail Lord in 1981. Barry has been instrumental in developing museum planning having co-authored with Gail Lord, five museum planning manuals that have been published in English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Georgian. In 2010 Gail and Barry collaborated to write Artists, Patrons, and the Public: Why Culture Changes. Barry’s most recent book is Art & Energy, published by The AAM Press of The American Alliance of Museums in 2014.

Gail Dexter Lord, Co-founder and President of Lord Cultural Resources. With Barry Lord, she is co-editor of The Manual of Museum Planning (1991, 1999, 2012), co-author of The Manual of Museum Management (1997 and 2009) and Artists, Patrons and the Public: Why Culture Changes (2010). She is co-author with Kate Markert of The Manual of Strategic Planning for Museums (2007). Gail has led cultural and tourism plans for cities as well as planning, management and exhibition assignments for museums, galleries and cities throughout Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, North America and Asia. In 2014, Gail was appointed Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Minister of Culture of France. More recently, Gail Lord was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. 

  • "This is a valuable project and the world will want to know what Barry Lord and Gail Dexter Lord think about the matters they touch: I can’t think of authors whose practical wisdom is better suite to the task."
    Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, University of Notre Dame; author of Civilizations: Culture, Ambition and the Transformation of Nature.
  • "The clarity with which the Lords define the terms is one of the things that make this such an important book. I don’t think a book like this has been done before. It’s going to be an enormous aid to anyone working in the culture sector – practitioners, teachers, historians, and theorists, too."
    Marta Braun, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University; author of Picturing Time: The Work of Étienne-Jules Marey.