Wieand - Can There Be an Institutional Theory of Art

8/8/2019 Wieand - Can There Be an Institutional Theory of Art

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JEFFREY WIEAND

C a n T h e r e B e a n InstitutionalT h e o r y o f A r t ?

AN INSTITUTIONAL THEORY of art under-takes to define or otherwise elucidate thenature of art by reference to social institu-tions. Since art itself, conceived as a body ofworks, cannot be an institution, an institu-tional theory must show that objects areworks of art because they bear a relation toan institution or are embedded in an insti-tutional context. The context must be insti-tutional becauseonly an institution (a socialpractice or organization) will be rich enoughto endow objects with a special metaphysicalor aesthetical character.I believe that in thecase of art there is no institution which cando this. I will argue in this paper thattheories of art which are supposed to beinstitutional are not in fact institutionaltheories at all, and that it is unlikely thata truly institutional theory can be developed.

There are many kinds of institutions, andthe word "institution" is often used to referto anything which has become settled orestablished over a period of time. Thereare, nevertheless, two sorts of institutionswhich might play a theoretically interestingrole in theories of art. I will call the firstkind "A-institutions" (the "A" standing for"action"). An A-institution is an action-typewhose tokens are particular performancesof that type of action. A-institutions are dis-tinguished from other kinds of acts andJEFFREY WIEAND is lecturer in the College at theUniversity of Chicago.

social practices because they are rule-governed; there are various rules and con-straints which must be observed if an actis to be a performance of an A-institutionaltype. Thus someone who wishes to make apromise must follow certain rules and ob-serve certain constraints if his act is to bean act of promising at all. Someone whowishes to dig a ditch, on the other hand,need not worry about such rules and con-straints. An A-institution, then, is simplya kind of conventional act. Examples ofsuch acts include promising, christening,saluting, and marrying; examples of socialpractices which are not A-institutions in-clude smoking cigarettes and driving towork; examples of acts which are neither A-institutions nor non-A-institutional socialpractices include digging, walking, and com-plaining.The second sort of institutions are whatI will call P-institutions (the "P" standingfor "person"). P-institutions function asquasi-persons or agents; they perform ac-tions and may be held responsible for them.The Catholic Church, for example, mayhold a fund drive or condemn an injustice.In general, a P-institution acts throughthose of its members who are empowered toact on its behalf.There is, then, a certain ambiguity in theexpression "institutional act." An act maybe institutional because it was performedby an institution, or it may be institutionalbecause it is a token of a certain type of act,that is, a conventional act. Many of the acts


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WI E A N Dperformed by P-institutions are A-institu-tions, but not all of them are. The CatholicChurch makes promises, but it also givesalms. Moreover,many P-institutions performA-institutional acts which are peculiar tothem, and which are not and could not beperformed by any other person or institu-tion. In cases like this, the P-institutionenters into the concept of the act itself. Forexample, since only the head of the CatholicChurch (the Pope) can issue a Bull, refer-ence must be made to the Catholic Churchin order to say what sort of act "issuing aBull" is. There are also acts which mayonly be performed by certain kinds of insti-tutions. War can be declared, for example,only by a government or nation. Finally,there are acts, practices,and perhaps A-insti-tutions which, while they are not (or neednot be) performed by some P-institution, re-quire nonetheless the existence or contextof a P-institution for their performance.Burning a draft card is an example of thiskind of act.The distinction between A- and P-insti-tutions is thus a distinction between insti-tutions as acts, or rather kinds of acts, andinstitutions as agents. Note, however, thatjust as A-institutions are not simply acts,but acts embedded in conventions, so P-institutions are not simply groups of personswho act in concert (like a mob) or whohave something in common (like poolplayers or parachutists). The difference be-tween such groups and P-institutions lies inthe fact that the members of the former actas separate agents and act in concert onlyper accidens. Thus the actions of the "mem-bers" cannot also be described as the actionof an institution. But when members of aP-institution act on its behalf the institutionacts through them, and the actions of themembers may be described both as the ac-tions of particular people and as the actionsof an institution. Only the acts of P-institu-tions may be described in this way.2

With these features of institutions inmind, we can turn to a consideration of pur-

ported institutional theories. The chief can-didate is George Dickie's theory, as it isfound in Art and the Aesthetic: An Insti-tutional Analysis.2 An institutional theoryis also supposed to be found in several ofArthur Danto's well-known papers.3 Thefocus will be on Dickie because his effort isexemplary of the possibilities of institutionaltheories and gets nearly far enough, in suf-ficient detail, to discover that there is notheory to be formulated. Thus in discussingDickie's view, I mean to show not only thathe is mistaken, but also that the kind oftheory he tries to present is impossible.Dickie's theory seems to involve both A-and P-institutions. In Art and the AestheticDickie defines art as follows:

A work of art in the classificatory sense is (1) anartifact (2) a set of the aspects of which hashad conferred upon it the status of candidate forappreciation by some person or persons acting onbehalf of a certain social institution (the art-world).4On Dickie's view the conferral of the statusof candidate for appreciation seems to bean A-institution, a particular sort of con-ventional act. But the definition apparentlyrefers to a P-institution when it specifiesthat such acts are performed on behalf ofthe artworld.Dickie, however, in effect denies that theartworld is a P-institution:

Let me make clear what I mean by speaking ofthe artworld as an institution. Among the mean-ings of "institution" in Webster's New CollegiateDictionary are the following: "3. That which isinstituted as: a. An established practice, law,custom, etc. b. An established society or corpora-tion." [This corresponds roughly to my distinc-tion between A- and P-institutions.j When I callthe artworld an institution I am saying that itis an established practice. Some persons havethought that an institution must be an estab-lished society or corporation and, consequently,have misunderstood my claim about the art-world.6

Similarly, in a recent lecture, Dickie saidthat his intent in Art and the Aesthetic"was to give an account of the artworld asthe broad, informal cultural practice that 1conceive it to be."6

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Can There Be an Institutional Theory of Art?Now all "established" or "cultural" prac-tices are not institutions in what I havecalled the A-institutional sense. Having anightcap is a practice, but it is not an insti-

tution (a conventional act). Still, it is anecessarycondition for something's being anA-institution that it is also a practice, andsince Dickie is explaining what he meansby calling the artworld an institution, wecan assume that the established practice hehas in mind is an institutional one, that is,an A-institution. But it is impossible to ac-cept such a construal of the artworld givenhow Dickie actually treats it. The objectionsbegin with the word itself. Why call anestablished practice the "artworld"? Theterm "artworld" hardly suggests a kind ofpractice or act. Sailing may be an estab-lished practice, but the world of sailing iscertainly not.That the artworld is not the sort of thingwhich can be an established practice is evi-dent from what Dickie says about it. Herefers to the "core personnel of the art-world,"7 but this makes no sense if theartworld is an A-institution. A P-institutionis the sort of thing that can have membersor personnel. (There may, of course,be peo-ple who characteristically participate in apractice, but these people are not "part of"the practice itself.) Later in Art and theAesthetic, in the course of his discussion ofinstitutional powers, Dickie says that theartworld "is an example of an institutionalstructure which generates the power to con-fer the status of art."8 He goes on to dis-tinguish highly organized institutions from"rather loosely organized groups such as theartworld."9 Clearly Dickie is thinking ofthe artworld in both these cases as a socialgroup and not as an established practice.Finally, art is defined by Dickie as what isput forward on behalf of the artworld. Butwhile people do things on behalf of otherpeople, or groups of people, or institutionswhich are like people, they do not do thingson behalf of established practices.10Theydo things out of respect or admiration for,loyalty to, and in accordance with suchpractices. The conclusion seems inescapablethat in calling the artworld an established

411practice Dickie has made a grammatical andconceptual error.3

I suggest, then, that Dickie is either guiltyof a category mistake, or that he does notreally think of the artworld as an estab-lished practice. There is something on Dick-ie's view which will count as an establishedpractice, and this is the conferring of thestatus of candidate for appreciation. Butthen what is the artworld? It is natural tosuppose that it is a P-institution, but thewhole point of calling the artworld anestablished practice was precisely to distin-guish it from "an established society or cor-poration." It is easy to see why Dickie doesnot want the artworld to be construed as anestablished society or corporation: no suchthing exists. The artworld does not paytaxes and is not listed in the phone book.But perhaps all P-institutions are not likeestablished societies and corporations. Con-sider the following passage:

Some may feel that the notion of conferringstatus within the artworld is not as clear-cut asthe conferring of status within the legal system,where procedures and lines of authority are ex-plicitly defined and incorporated into law. Thecounterparts in the artworld to specified proce-dures and lines of authority are nowhere codi-fied, and the artworld carries on its business atthe level of customary practice. Still there is apractice and this defines a social institution. Asocial institution need not have a formally estab-lished constitution, officers, and bylaws in orderto exist and have the capacity to confer status-some social institutions are formal and some areinformal."Thus when Dickie says that the artworldis not an established society or corporationwhat he has in mind is that the artworld isnot formally constituted-it has no consti-tution, officers, bylaws, and so on. ManyP-institutions do have these characteristics,and the possession of them may even be asufficient condition for being a P-institu-tion. But it is not a necessarycondition. Inorder for something to be a P-institution itmust be capable of acting, and a constitutionor a hierarchy of authority does not seem


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WIEANDto be required for this. For example, a smallad hoc committee of a larger body may haveno constitution, laws, or chairperson, but itmay nevertheless make a report or recom-mendation, issue a statement, and the like.A committee member who makes a reportto the larger body acts thereby on behalfof the committee, and the minutes may re-cord that the committee made its report. Aslong as the committee functions as an agent,a quasi-person, it will count as what I havecalled a P-institution. Consequently, by de-scribing the artworld as an "informal insti-tution" and not as a society or corporation,Dickie may simply be saying that the art-world can act without the benefit of officers,laws, and a constitution. In particular, it willbe possible for someone to confer the statusof candidate for appreciation on behalf ofthe artworld.This reading of Dickie seems even moreplausible when we consider the actionswhich Dickie has compared to conferring:12

a king's conferring of knighthooda grand jury's indicting someonethe chairman of the election board certifyingthat someone is qualified to run for officea minister's pronouncing a couple man and wifethe congress or a legally constituted commission[conferring] the status of national park ormonument on an area or thingthe conferring of a Ph.D. degree on someone bya universitythe election of someone as president of the

Rotarythe declaring of an object as a relic of the churchThese actions are all performed by a P-institution or by someone acting on behalfof a P-institution. (Moreover, they all seemto be conventional acts.) The relevant senseof "acting on behalf of" will be as follows:

A person S acts on behalf of a P-institution Tonly if S's action may be described, not only asthe action of S, but also as the action of T.Unfortunately, the artworld does not evenseem to have the measure of formalityessential to an informal institution. Unlikethe P-institutions in Dickie's analogies, theartworld (1) has no clear membership; (2)has designated no one to act on its behalfand has no procedure for doing so; (3) has

no criteria for saying what is to count as"acting on its behalf." Dickie, of course,does not think that anyone must be desig-nated to act on behalf of the artworld; hethinks that anyone who sees himself as anagent of the artworld is one. But in thatcase it is hard to see how anyone can reallyact for the artworld. An institution imposesat least informal constraints on what is tocount as an action on its behalf. Thus inmy example of an informal institution,where a member of a committee makes areport, there are criteria according to whichhis action either is or is not an action ofthe committee as well. If, for example, hemakes statements contrary to the consensusof the committee, other members of thecommittee will point out that he is speakingfor himself and not for them. They willdeny, in other words, that he is acting ontheir behalf in the sense defined. But whenDickie's artworld denies that someone isacting on its behalf, this denial has no forceor legitimacy. It will be possible for me tomake something a work of art despite thefact that everyone in the artworld is pre-pared to deny that I have. It would beabsurd, under these circumstances, to saythat I was acting on behalf of the artworld.It might be suggested that conferring it-self requires that the artworld be a P-insti-tution. The argument for this would reston Dickie's remark (quoted above) that apractice defines a social institution. Thisthesis, however, is false. Walking a dog isa practice, but no institution is required ordefined by it. Of course, dog walking is nota conventional practice, and the claim maybe that only conventional practices (A-insti-tutions) define social institutions. But thisclaim is either trivial or false. If any sort ofinstitution will do, the claim is trivial be-cause an A-institution will always define atleast one institution, namely itself. On theother hand, the claim is false if what ismeant is that every A-institution defines aP-institution. What P-institution does prom-ising define? As a last resort, Dickie mightclaim (as it sometimes looks like he is claim-ing) that conferring is the sort of A-institu-tion which can only be performed by acertain P-institution, as only the Senate can

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Can There Be an Institutional Theory of Art?try the president of the United States. Hemight then argue that acts of this kinddefine the institution which performs them.But of course to make this argument wewould have to know in advance that confer-ring is this kind of A-institution, and toknow that is already to know what the argu-ment wants to prove.The objection to regarding the artworldas a P-institution may be restated as follows:anyone who claims to act on behalf of a P-institution must somehow be responsible tothe wishes and opinions of the other mem-bers of the institution and to the institutionas a whole. But there is no way in which themembers of the artworld are accountable toit. This just shows that conferring cannotbe done on behalf of the artworld (in thesense of "on behalf of" which I definedearlier). Since there is no other way inwhich the artworld functions as an agent, itmust be concluded that the artwvorld s nota P-institution. But neither is the artworldan A-institution. Consequently, the artworldis not, in any theoretically interesting sense,an institution at all.4

Denying that the artworld is an institu-tion does not, however, do away with Dick-ie's theory. All the denial really entails isthat the artworld is not what confers thestatus of candidate for appreciation. Thepossibility remains open that there is someother relation between conferring and theartworld.Before we can guess what this relationmight be we must have a better idea ofwhat the artworld is. I suggest that we re-gard the artworld as a kind of co,mmunity.When I was in college in a small town inVermont we used to speak of the "collegecommunity," by which we meant, not onlythe students and employees of the college(of the institution), but also people moreor less connected with the college-retiredfaculty and alumni living in the township,shopkeepers who did business with studentsand the college, people who used the collegefacilities, read the college newspaper, andso on. The community, in other words, con-

413sisted of all those people whose lives wereaffected by the college and who, in turn,affected it. I suggest that the artworld is acommunity rather like this. One difference,however, between my old college commu-nity and the artworld is that the former wasbuilt around a single P-institution, the col-lege,13 whereas the latter is partially com-posed of a great many P-institutions, includ-ing art galleries, orchestral associations,movie studios, art classes, and journals ofcriticism.When I argued that no one could be saidto act on behalf of the artworld, what Imeant by "acting on behalf of" was anyaction which a person (or group of persons)performed which might also be describedas the action of a P-institution. But onecan also act "on behalf of" something ifone acts in its interest or for its benefit. Inthis weaker sense of "acting on behalf of"it makes perfect sense to say that someoneconfers the status of candidate for apprecia-tion on behalf of (for the benefit of) theartworld. This may not be an accurate de-scription of what people do when they makeworks of art, but it is not absurd to thinkthat they do this, and whether or not theydo is open to empirical investigation.These considerations, however, do not bythemselves entail that art is institutional. Ifthe artworld is seen as a community, Dick-ie's theory will be institutional only if con-ferring is a conventional act. AlthoughDickie does not call conferring a conven-tional act, there are grounds for supposingthat he thinks of it as one. First, conferralsof any kind, particularly conferrals of somestatus, are conventional acts. This much isevident from two of Dickie's examples ofacts which are like conferring: conferringknighthood and conferring a Ph.D. degree.Second, the rest of the acts which Dickiecompares to conferring are all conventionalacts, that is, A-institutions. Finally, Dickiesaid that the artworld is an institution be-cause it is an established practice, but con-ferring is the only genuine practice referredto in his definition. Thus in calling the art-world an established practice, Dickie mayhave meant that what he saw as the actsof the artworld-conferrals of status-were


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WIEANDinstances of an established practice. If thisis so, we can suggest that conferring is aconventional act, one which requires thebackground of a social community (the art-world) in the sense that conferring is per-formed in the interest of or for the benefitof this community. Conferring in this caseis not the act of an institution; it is an A-institutional act which can be performed.as Dickie says, by anyone who is aware ofthe existence of the art community. Thus Ipropose to consider in the remainder of thispaper the plausibility of the claim that con-ferring is an A-institution.5

Before doing this, however, let me removean objection which has been advancedagainst the idea that conferring is a conven-tional act. In a well-known paper, "ThePossibility of Art,"'4 Ted Cohen has arguedthat if conferring is a conventional act, itought to be part of the conventions govern-ing the performance of the act that theobject on which the status can be conferredis, or at least seems to be, capable of beingappreciated. If everything can be appreci-ated, what is the point of conferring status?But even if Cohen is right about this, andnot all artifacts can be appreciated, it doesnot follow that an unappreciatable artifactcannot be made a work of art. It is opento Dickie to claim that it is more or lessunderstood that no one will confer thestatus of candidate for appreciation on anartifact which he himself does not appreci-ate or think worth the attention of others.In recommending an artifact to our atten-tion, any conferrer with integrity will trynot to waste our attention on relatively un-interesting artifacts. Dickie can claim, inother words, that a maxim rather like thoseintroduced by H. P. Grice as maxims ofconversational implicature'5 is enforced onthe conferring of status. This maxim mightbe: confer statusonly on those objects whichyou deem capable of being appreciated andworthy of the attention of others. NowGrice's maxims are not inviolable: a speak-er can flout the appreciatability maxim with-out thereby failing to make a work of art.

This idea can help Dickie explain a greatdeal about modern art, including the sig-nificance of Duchamp. Thus Dickie neednot claim that all artifacts can be appreci-ated, provided he is willing to allow thatconferring is governed by something likethe appreciatability maxim I have suggested.But although Dickie can deal with thisobjection, Cohen may nevertheless beright: conferring may not be an A-institu-tion. Consider what is involved in confer-ring knighthood. A ceremony is performedin which a person is dubbed a knight of therealm by an official empowered to do this.Thus one disparity between conferringstatus and conferring knighthood has al-ready been noted: knighthood is conferredby someone acting on behalf of a P-institu-tion; status is not. It follows that Dickiemust make out the notion of conferring asa conventional act without saying that con-ferring is performed by or on behalf of (inthe strong sense of "acting on behalf of") aP-institution. Moreover, the conferring ofknighthood occurs in a ceremony-certainwords are uttered and certain actions areperformed. There is, then, another way topick out the conventional character of thisact beyond saying that it is an act of con-ferring knighthood.Like all actions, conventional actions canbe described in many ways, but not all ofthese ways are relevant to the conventionalcharacter of these actions. For example, aphysiological description of a speech actwill not show that the act was an act ofpromising. I will call a description of anact "conventional" if it indicates that theaction was a conventional act. The name ofan act will usually function as a convention-al description; to say that the queen "con-ferred knighthood" is to indicate that thequeen performed a conventional act. Butwe could also indicate this by saying thatthe queen said such-and-suchwords undersuch-and-such circumstances (where thesewords and circumstancesare filled out). Thissecond kind of conventional description re-fers to features of the ceremony in whichknighthood is conferred; it identifies someof the conventions (rules and constraints)actually in play in conferring knighthood

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Can There Be an Institutional Theory of Art?and gives marks of the act by which some-one could tell that the act was an act of con-ferring knighthood.Now in the case of conferring status thereis evidently (1) nothing which correspondsto the ceremony in the conferring of knight-hood; (2) no conventional description avail-able apart from the naming of the act. Thefirst of these is true because no one has todo any particular thing in order successfullyto confer the status of candidate for appre-ciation. Evidently, there is an indefinitenumber of ways in which this status can beconferred. I might, for example, conferstatus on a painting by hanging it on awall, but I could do the same thing byshowing it to someone, by carrying it about,or by keeping it in a special cabinet. Smallwonder then that there is no general con-ventional description which obtains for allof these acts apart from the one which says,that they are all cases of conferring status.But if there is no informative convention-al description of conferrals, how are we todistinguish conferrals from other acts?How,for instance, are we to distinguish hangingsomething on a wall in order to make it awork of art from hanging something on awall in order to do something else? Dickie,of course, thinks that in the first case I amacting on behalf of the artworld, but sincethe artworld is not a P-institution we haveseen that what Dickie must mean by "actingon behalf of" is something like "acting inthe interest or for the benefit of." But thisweak sense of "acting on behalf of" will nothelp us to distinguish conferrals of statusfrom other acts. Imagine a fund drive inwhich patrons of the arts are encouraged topledge contributions by taping on a wallslips of paper which tell how much they arewilling to pledge. A patron who (loes thiswill be acting on behalf of the artworld,but it will be hard to specify any conven-tions which distinguish his act from the actof some artist who is also present at thefund drive and who tapes a slip of paperon the wall in order to confer upon it thestatus of candidate for appreciation. Actual-ly, there are conventions which signal a dif-ference, but they are all on the side of thepatron: it is a rule of the fund drive that

taping a slip on the wall counts as pledginga contribution. But why does it not alsocount as conferring the status of candidatefor appreciation? It cannot be denied thatthe patron acts on behalf of the artworld(in the weaker sense), so the difference doesnot lie here. We still do not know whatconventions govern the artist's act or whyhis act counts as a conferral of the status ofcandidate for appreciation.The only difference which I can see be-tween the artist's act and the patron's act(beside the fact that the patron's act may begoverned by conventions) is a difference inintent. I submit that what is supposed tomake the artist's act an act of conferringstatus is that he intends to do it. But in thiscase it is no use saying that the artist's actis a conventional act. It is not enough mere-ly to intend to perform an act one imaginesto be conventional; there must actually beconventions governing the act. Dickie hassaid nothing whatever about such conven-tions; nor has he said anything about theact of conferring status apart from the factthat in performing it one intends to makesomething a candidate for appreciation.Thus the only conventional description hehas furnished of conferring status is thename of the act itself.

Suppose a painter asks Dickie how he cango about conferring status on one of hispaintings. Dickie can explain that the paint-er should call attention to the painting insome way. He can show it to people, displayit in a conspicuous place, put it up for sale,and so on. Any such action can reasonablybedescribed as one which is likely to maximizethe chances that the painting will be appre-ciated in the way in which works of art areappreciated. But perhaps the painter hasalready done these things; what furtherthing, he may ask, must he do in order toconfer the status of candidate for apprecia-tion on his painting? This is a reasonablequestion to ask because there did not seemto be anything in showing or displaying thepainting which caused it to have any par-ticular status. Dickie can only reply that thestatus has already been conferred, but thisanswer is curious for two reasons. (1) Ifintention really is crucial in conferring

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W I E A N Dstatus, how can the painter confer statuswithout realizing it? (2) How can there bea convention in accordance with whichpeople act when no one (at least untilDickie's book) was aware of the existence ofsuch conventions? No one knew, in otherwords, that hanging a painting on the wallhad the significance of making it a work ofart. It is a very odd convention indeedwhich operates without being recognizedeven implicitly.I conclude that, although what Dickiesays about conferring makes it seem asthough it is supposed to be a conventionalact, there is not the slightest reason to sup-pose that it is or can be. If conferrals areconventional, it should be possible to givea conventional description of them apartfrom calling them conferrals of the statusof candidate for appreciation. I cannotprove that such a description does not exist.,but under the circumstances the burden ofproof properly lies with anyone who wishesto maintain that conferrals are conventional,especially since for a long time no one wasaware that they were doing anything like"conferring the status of candidate forappreciation." For the present we can restcontent with the assumption that conferringis not conventional and that it is thereforenot an A-institution.6

Thus Dickie has not shown that art isinstitutional or that its nature depends oninstitutions simply because no institutionsare referred to in his theory. It must not bethought, however, that Dickie still has atheory, only not an institutional one, forwhatever plausibility his view possessedrested entirely on its apparent institutionalcharacter. If the artworld is not an insti-tution it will not be able to confer status,and if conferring is not an institution therecan be no such act at all. (What would itmean to confer some kind of status in theabsence of any conventions or rules gov-erning either the act of conferring or thepossession by some object of the status as iresult of the action?)It would be equally wrong to regard

Danto's views about art as institutional.Danto never said that he had an institu-tional view of art, but such a view has beenattributed to him because of the importancehe attaches to the artworld. The view whichDanto defends in several places may be des-cribed as follows: x is a work of art at timet if and only if the theory held by the art-world at t canonizes x. It has been shown,however, that the artworld is not an insti-tution, although it may be regarded as akind of community. It might be suggestedthat the artworld according to Danto canbe an institution because it is supposed tohold, at a given time, a given theory of art.But all this would mean is that the "mem-bers" of the artworld have certain beliefs,and the fact that persons share beliefs isnot enough to make them members of aninstitution. There is nothing in Danto'swritings on art which will serve to justifythe view that something is a work of artbecause of its relation to some human insti-tution.Is art institutional? In one sense theanswer is yes, certainly. Art is an establishedand characteristic feature of our society-like the automobile or running water. Butthe sense of "institution" here is nottheoretically interesting and does not ad-vance our understanding of the nature ofart. If art itself were an institution in aninteresting sense it would either be a kindof conventional act or a social group. Butart, understood as a body of works or asan activity, is plainly neither of thesethings. This is why an institutional theoryof art will try to show that a work of artmust bear a relation to a supposed institu-tional act (like conferring) or to a supposedP-institution (like the artworld). Any suchmove seems destined to fail. Art is inex-tricably bound up with social institutionsand artistic conventions, but none of theseis so crucial or pervasive as to determinethe nature of art itself.

1Readers who do not think that types of conven-tional acts are properly called "institutions" haveno quarrel with the argument of this paper, for ifconventional acts are not institutions, no theoryof art can be institutional simply because it makesreference to such acts.

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Wieand - Can There Be an Institutional Theory of Art