Modern Art Cabbies

Bringing Art to the Masses or Innovative Marketing Strategy?

In 2007 two of Liverpool’s cabbies were given the task of driving around the "Capital of Culture" charged with 'gabbing' about the 2007 Turner Prize with their customers.

Tate Liverpool’s Taxi Project, initiated in June 2007, gave taxi drivers intensive courses in contemporary art, the history of the Turner Prize and the exhibit’s controversies. The conversations were screened alongside the Prize nominations, with the Tate’s hope that they "offer a snap shot of opinion and feeling in the city about the Prize and about art and life in general."

But is the project really an attempt to bring art to the masses? Or is it part and parcel with a larger marketing strategy and a growing tendency to employ "casual advertisers" who infiltrate social gatherings and put their gift of gab to use on behalf of commercial companies. (Recall the controversies over

student product promoters on American university campuses, who are paid to strike up conversations with their fellow students about the newest Apple computer or the health benefits of various soft drinks).

The Taxi Project and the 2007 Turner Prize was sponsored by

Metquarter", "Liverpool’s premier shopping destination. With 40 top stores…[it] is home to leading fashion and lifestyle brands including M.A.C, BOSS Hugo Boss and Flannels" and by Arts & Business, an independent organisation which has recognized "the importance of brand building [and] innovation" and helps companies achieve their objectives by developing unique connections between business and the arts.

So, when art is commodity, and when art exhibitions have eager corporate sponsors, can art education be separated from marketing?

Related:

The Times on the taxi-driving Tate promoters Liverpool as the 2008 European Capital of Culture"Do corporate sponsorships compromise theatres?" in The Guardian

What do you say?