| My dissertation examines the ways cultural organizations garner and maintain positions of legitimate authority as cultural producers. How do cultural organizations---particularly small ethnic museums---achieve the status that enables and authorizes them to produce culture? Using the extended case method to approach this question, I offer a historically situated, institutional-level analysis of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum (MFACM), a small ethnic cultural organization located in Chicago's Pilsen community. In 1982, several local schoolteachers applied their combined finances of ;To address the question of how museums like the MFACM achieved this status, I consider how scholars theorize the art world, cultural organizations in the art world, and the ability to build and maintain reputation. Specifically, I derive conceptual inspiration from Pierre Bourdieu's (1993) theoretical work on the fields of cultural production, especially relying on his work on reputation and the attendant constructs of resources and relationships to inform my inquiry.;My research suggests that the MFACM was able to participate in the privileged process of cultural production and construct its institutional reputation by leveraging its two strategic assets---Mexican ethnicity and economic resources---and by building key relationships with power players in the art world and in the Mexican community. The museum's reputation is based on its position as a bridge, linking the art world and the avant-garde---what I argue is the basis of its power as a cultural producer. |
