A growing awareness of the cultural effects of imperialism, and its political dimension, prompts a revision of the approach to cultural management from a decolonial perspective. The need to recover perspectives from the global South is evident in the debate on how to enable the transformations that this approach calls for. This book presents the state of the art of South American cultural management by practitioners and researchers whose work is generally limited to the Spanish-speaking world.

In a lot of countries, arts organizations seem to be publicly funded for their mere existence without being audited continuously for their efficiency or social impact. At the same time, civil society plays an active role in the shaping of cultural policy. How could we combine both demands? The learnings of the new public management models implemented by several states in Brazil for their cultural institutions can shed light on the role of government and civil society in the cultural landscape and on the possibilities of true and effective partnerships among them.