Professional Gatekeeping Explains Modernism

When professions gain autonomy (tenure, licensing, peer review), they acquire authority to set standards that the general public need not endorse. In art this allowed curators, critics and museum networks to institutionalize modernist aesthetics despite widespread popular dislike, producing a persistent elite–public taste gap that shows up in architecture, museums, and federal buildings. — Explaining cultural divergence as an effect of professional autonomy reframes debates about public architecture, museum accountability, and democratic input into cultural policy and procurement.