The EUI's Florence School of Transnational Governance is hosting a book presentation of Invisible Cultural Policy in America: How Public Administration Shapes Culture, written by Eleonora Redaelli, IES abroad and Professor at the University of Oregon, and published by Edward Elgar in summer 2025. The author will be present and in conversation with discussant Marina Cino Pagliarello and chair Claudio Radaelli.
In the United States, cultural policy is often understood through its most visible institutions, symbolic controversies, or popular cultural forms such as television series and film. Yet much of the government’s role in shaping cultural life remains diffuse and largely invisible, embedded in administrative systems, intergovernmental relationships, and routine practices of governance. While public support for culture is often assumed to be limited or exceptional in the American context, federal and state institutions have long played a significant role in sustaining the arts, humanities, and historic preservation.
At a moment when democratic institutions are under strain and the public value of culture is increasingly contested, making these structures visible is especially important. Examining how cultural governance operates across levels of government helps clarify not only how public institutions shape cultural life, but also how they sustain a pluralistic public culture grounded in diverse democratic values.
The book examines the often-overlooked role of public administration in fostering a pluralistic cultural landscape through multilevel governance. Focusing on the arts, humanities, and historic preservation, it traces the legislation that legitimised federal involvement, the evolution of cultural federalism across national and state agencies, and the intellectual debates that shaped changing interpretations of the government role in these cultural domains. Through national examples alongside cases from Oregon, Minnesota, Maryland, and New Mexico, the presentation shows how fragmented governance has nonetheless produced a widespread framework for public cultural support.
Rather than treating this fragmentation as a weakness alone that makes cultural policy invisible, the presentation argues that the idea of a pluralistic public culture offers a unifying lens for understanding how public support for culture can contribute to democratic life.