Engaged Dissent

Abstract

Abstract This multiple-case study examines the operation and interaction of entrepreneurship and art in the institutional practice of visual artists Nan Goldin, Theaster Gates, and Yayoi Kusama. Case analysis narrows its focus to the exercise of emancipatory, public, and effectual principles of entrepreneurship within aesthetic frameworks informed by art practices ranging from punk to performance to social practice to Pop Art, in tandem with lived experience. Overlaps between cases highlight the role of performance art, sector spanning, and marginalization as factors in all three artists’ instigation of institutional change. As backdrop to the cases, this chapter bridges institutional entrepreneurship and institutional critique to establish a transdisciplinary theoretical baseline for agency. In the process, it discerns the potential for entrepreneurship studies to bolster and renew institutional practice in art.