The increasing importance of such public policy issues make this area a vital one for inclusion in the Harvard Summer School Institute in Arts Administration's summer training program for arts administrators. In considering the treatment of this area, for certain insights it seemed logical to draw on the longer European tradition and experience with cultural policy matters. Thus, it was decided to provide international perspectives, through the vehicle of an international colloquium. Each colloquium was intended to bring to the program participants a variety of viewpoints on cultural and public policy issues germane to arts administrators.

For each of the first three years of the Institute, colloquium sessions were held. Each had its own theme:

• Government Patronage, Artistic Freedom, and Public Accountability (1970).
• Disestablishing the arts - seeking cultural alternatives (1971).
• Art and the Majority (1972).

For this volume, the collected papers delivered at all three of these colloquia have been reorganized into what we believe is a coherent treatment of the broad areas of cultural policy and arts administration. The book is sequenced so that the chapters flow in a logical pattern. The initial papers address matters of broadest social and cultural policy; the book then moves to treatment of policies of support for artists and arts institutions, then to issues of financial support and the planning to determine that support, and finally to a program of implementation of such support policies. (p. vii-viii)