Jazz in the gallery: How culture enters cultured space (Bunk Johnson)

This paper explores the process by which cultural phenomena become institutionalized and validated within the social category of "art" in the U.S. Employing jazz as the primary example, this work shows how institutions, particularly museums, participate in organizing an inequitable society by regulating aesthetic categories in ways that facilitate the oppression of minoritized groups. Drawing on institutional ethnography, the thesis explicates Bunk Johnson's jazz career in the 1940s, examining how curators and critics constructed his revival. The analysis reveals how oppositional arts and artists are managed and integrated into the category of "Art" in ways that uphold dominant hierarchies. Primitive art, outsider art, and the embrace of post-modernism within the cultural sector are also examined in terms of this process. The thesis ultimately suggests that cultural institutions can work for rather than against social transformation by creating genuine space for oppositional art forms, artists, and administrators who problematize and offer alternatives to the traditional canon.