Equity in public arts administration in Austin, Texas: Interpretations of equity practice across time

In the past 10 years, an increasing number of local arts agencies in the United States have committed to advancing equity (Cornfield et al., 2023; Loh et al., 2022); however, the concept of equity has been difficult to define (Ashley et al., 2022) and accomplish in practice (Hadley et al., 2022). Informed by research in public administration, social justice, and interpretive theory, this thesis used a single site study design to investigate how actors in the field of public arts administration in Austin, Texas have interpreted and developed practices for equity in the city’s publicly-funded arts sector. To gain insight into these questions, semistructured interviews were conducted with a mixture of actors in Austin’s system of public arts administration including artists, government officials, and public arts administrators. In addition, a wide range of documentary data from 1969-2023 including periodicals, government reports, meeting minutes, and policies were collected to further illuminate interpretations and practices for equity across time within shifting systems and structures of local public arts administration. Combining Fraser’s (2005) three-dimensional theory of social justice with a diachronic approach (Schmidt, 1967), these data were thematically analysed in terms of their political, cultural, economic, and temporal dimensions. Interpretations of equity were found to be embedded in the practices of mapping, geographic distribution of buildings, transparency, and coordination. Synthesis of the study themes and their connections across time highlighted broad trends of redress, resistance, and adaptation. The study’s central findings indicate that while there have been significant systemic and relational challenges for advancing equity, there have also been recurring trends of persistence and adaptability in practice to overcome these challenges. The central argument of this thesis is that a diachronic approach to social justice research can assist in teasing out trends in practices for equity across time and yield greater insight into the ways in which they may become embedded, constrained, and/or reinforced in a local public administration context. When armed with this insight, it is argued that public arts administrators may be better equipped to reflexively reckon with these trends and facilitate practices that advance transformative outcomes for equity in the arts. This study makes a unique contribution to the field of cultural policy by providing a diachronic view of the development of Austin’s public arts office, its evolution across time, and how local context has contributed to framing interpretations of, and practices for, equity in public arts administration.