The Nature of the Beast: Cultural Diversity and the Visual Arts Sector. A study of policies, initiatives and attitudes 1976-2006
The Nature of the Beast sets out to explore the impact that cultural diversity policies and initiatives, within the publicly funded arts sector, have had on Black visual arts activity in England over the past four decades.
Richard Hylton offers the reader a fascinating insight into the roles played by the protagonists, including the Greater London Council, Arts Council England, publicly funded galleries and arts organisations. Charting cultural diversity’s various incarnations, from ‘ethnic arts’ in the late 1970s, ‘black arts’ in the 1980s, ‘new internationalism’ in the 1990s and ‘culturally diverse arts’ in the 21st century; Hylton’s study considers how, despite such changes to nomenclature, overly benevolent and prescriptive attempts at inculcating cultural diversity within the visual arts today reprise much of the outmoded thinking dating back to the 1970s.
Through in-depth research and analysis, this study assesses the extent to which certain policies and initiatives might have assisted or hindered the progress of Black artists within the English gallery system. This study meets a long overdue need for a public analysis of cultural diversity policies in the visual arts and will be invaluable to readers interested in cultural policy, arts administration, curatorial practice and the contemporary visual arts in general.
With a preface by Dr Daniel Hinchcliffe and an afterword by Eddie Chambers.
Published by the Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts (ICIA), University of Bath [ISBN 086197136]
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“Hylton has, inadvertently perhaps, produced the most authoritative modern history of Black artists’ activity in Britain. In this regard, we have much to thank him for.” Eddie Chambers
“Thoughtful, provocative and [a] very readable account of ‘Black’ arts activity and cultural policy” Art Monthly
“There are powerful arguments contained here. This should come as no surprise to those already familiar with Richard Hylton’s work” Mute Magazine
“An invaluable resource” a-n magazine
“The Nature of the Beast, by the coherence of its argument and the frustration felt in every line of its prose, is a book that is both passionately felt, yet insightful and focused. In demonstrating, if only from one perspective, the lack of risk-taking, fairness and joined-up-thinking in our approach to diversity arts provision, Hylton has made a priceless contribution to debates on representation and the visual arts in the UK. I think it should be read by everyone with an interest in equity and fairness in the publicly funded arts sector.”
Paul Dash — Goldsmiths College, University of London
(JADE 26.3.2007, NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing)
“…a thoughtful, thorough and searing critique of the introduction of divisiveness into the visual arts in England.” Tiffany Jenkins — Spiked Online
“The breadth and impartiality of The Nature of the Beast makes it an invaluable resource for arts and humanities teachers and researchers worldwide. Hylton’s detailed, well-illustrated and accessible narrative is effective in illuminating some of the less well-documented aspects of the social, political and cultural context that has shaped the art of the past three decades. It makes a significant contribution to knowledge about the forces of marginalization and exclusion that have affected Black British artists during that period and presents (as Daniel Hinchcliffe observes in the book’s preface) ‘an undismissable case for change from the collective amnesia that seems to abound as the wheel gets reinvented with each new cultural diversity arts initiative’.” Leigh-Anne Perryman — The Open University,UK (Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 2008; 7; 97)