Corina Șuteu

The following paper will only address a limited part of the complexity of issues
related to the academic training in cultural management regarded from a comparative,
European perspective. Its aim its to highlight a number of key topics of concern and offer a
broad perspective to further specialized debate. The perspective chosen is related in many
aspects to the author’s background. As director of a MA course in European cultural
management for the last eight years, but also as cultural operator in Europe, she is very much
aware about the importance of the present momentum to revise and reshape the reflection
dedicated to a discipline that only academically gained generalized legitimacy ten to fifteen
years ago in the whole of European countries.

Social exclusion disempowers people. It deprives them of access to
experience of the arts – when faced, as a substantial number of
people in Eastern Europe have been, with stark choices of
survival, going to the theater or cinema can hardly be expected to
be on their list of priorities. International declarations on access to
participation in cultural life are academic to those living in
poverty.1

Cultural institutions worldwide face new challenges to their financial sustainability, their organizational structures and their social relevance. This is particularly true in the European countries and the former Soviet Union. While the political and social changes in these regions differ greatly, the effects of economic liberalization in its many forms have fundamentally altered the context in which cultural organizations operate. With this context in mind, the Salzburg Seminar proposed that the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Seminar might jointly explore ideas for a program that could meet the needs of European cultural institutions.