When Curators Were Kings: Professional Autonomy Before the Corporate Institution

Comment on a youtube interview of Ahmad Paul Keeler, on Al Jazeera English Channel, entitled "How can The Islamic World Challenge Western Narratives about it? Posted Sep 14 2026

When Keeler was asked whether the World of Islam Festival of 1976 could be recreated today, his answer was striking: probably not. The obstacle, he suggested, would not primarily be money, technology or lack of interest. It would be the contemporary corporate culture of institutions. In the 1960s and 1970s, he recalled, professors, museum directors and curators possessed considerable authority (they were kings) within their respective institutions. If they recognised the intellectual or cultural value of a proposal, they could often decide to support it without submitting it to the extensive managerial processes that govern institutions today.

Keeler knew this from experience. Conceived at the beginning of the 1970s, the World of Islam Festival eventually brought together museums, universities, scholars, governments, musicians and cultural institutions across Britain. It comprised major exhibitions, concerts, lectures, seminars, films and publications. According to Keeler’s retrospective account, approximately 6,000 manuscripts and objects were assembled from 250 collections in 32 countries. Participating venues included the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, the British Library and the Hayward Gallery. The festival was opened by Queen Elizabeth II. It presented Islamic civilisation not as a collection of disconnected national cultures but as an integrated civilisational world united by Islam. "SOAS’s account of the festival" (https://blogs.soas.ac.uk/muslimwise/2016/05/16/ideas-hub-the-world-of-islam-festival-40th-anniversary-by-dr-ahmed-keeler/) documents its extraordinary scale.

The institutional environment that made such an undertaking possible differed markedly from that of today. Authority was located more directly in persons entrusted with knowledge and judgment. A museum curator was not merely an employee responsible for delivering predetermined performance targets. The curator was regarded as a custodian of a body of knowledge and a person capable of deciding what deserved to be collected, displayed and interpreted. Similarly, the professor was not merely a content provider, grant generator or unit within a performance-management system. The professor possessed authority derived from scholarship. The museum director was expected to exercise cultural judgment rather than constantly refer decisions upward or outward to administrators, marketing divisions, risk committees and corporate boards.

When Keeler described these figures as “kings,” he was not necessarily recommending absolute or unaccountable power. His metaphor pointed to the extent of their professional autonomy. Their institutions trusted them to make consequential decisions because their positions were presumed to embody experience, learning and judgment. Authority was attached to competence in the institution’s substantive purpose: scholarship in a university, curatorship in a museum and cultural stewardship in an arts institution.

This helps explain how a relatively young and unconventional organiser such as Keeler could approach major cultural institutions with an ambitious idea and obtain decisions from the people he met. His proposal did not first have to be translated into the language of key performance indicators, market segments, institutional rankings, reputational risk, measurable outcomes or corporate strategy. It could be considered according to its intellectual merit, cultural significance and imaginative possibilities. One person with recognised authority could see the value of the idea and say: let us do it.

This does not mean that the 1970s were free from committees, hierarchies or bureaucratic procedures. Nor should the period be romanticised. Concentrating authority in powerful professors and directors could preserve elitism, personal favouritism and institutional exclusion. Those who were not part of established professional networks might find themselves unable to enter the conversation. The autonomy of the curator could become curatorial arrogance; the authority of the professor could become academic feudalism. Accountability, transparency and consultation arose partly as legitimate responses to such problems.

Nevertheless, the solution created another problem. Over the following decades, particularly from the 1980s onward, public institutions increasingly adopted organisational methods derived from the corporate sector. Universities, museums, hospitals and cultural organisations were progressively expected to behave like businesses. Their activities had to be planned strategically, measured quantitatively, audited regularly and justified through evidence of efficiency, visibility and impact. Christopher Hood later described a related group of reforms as New Public Management: the application of private-sector management practices, explicit standards and performance measurements to public institutions. These reforms became especially influential in English-speaking countries from the 1980s onward. "Hood’s foundational analysis" (https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/27993/chapter/211717420) situates this transformation historically.

The result was not simply more administration. It was a redistribution of epistemic authority—authority over what counts as worthwhile knowledge and action. Decisions formerly made by people who understood the subject began to require validation by people responsible for managing the institution. Curators increasingly had to satisfy communications departments, development offices, legal advisers, risk officers, diversity frameworks, financial controllers and institutional branding strategies. Academics had to align their research and teaching with strategic plans, assessment exercises, funding priorities and measurable outputs.

No single layer in this arrangement is necessarily irrational. Financial responsibility, ethical review, public accountability and proper risk assessment are essential. The difficulty arises from their cumulative effect. Each procedure may appear reasonable in isolation, while their combination makes bold collective action increasingly difficult. No individual possesses sufficient authority to say yes, but numerous offices possess the power to delay, modify or prevent a decision.

Managerialism therefore does not merely create bureaucracy. It changes the nature of institutional reasoning. The central question gradually shifts from “Is this intellectually or culturally important?” to “Does this conform to our procedures?” An idea must be made auditable before it can be considered credible. Its anticipated outcomes must be specified before the exploratory work has begun. Innovation is encouraged rhetorically but must first be rendered administratively predictable.

Michael Power calls the expansion of such practices the audit society: a condition in which institutions increasingly organise their activities around the production of visible evidence that they are properly controlled and performing effectively. Audit does not merely examine work after it has been completed; it influences the kind of work organisations are willing to undertake. Activities that can be measured, documented and defended acquire an advantage over those whose significance is uncertain, qualitative or only apparent over long periods. "Oxford University Press’s description of The Audit Society" (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-audit-society-9780198296034) identifies audit as a wider principle of social organisation and control.

A project such as the World of Islam Festival depended upon precisely the qualities that managerial culture finds difficult to accommodate: personal trust, intellectual intuition, civilisational imagination and the willingness to begin before every outcome could be predicted. Its organisers could not have calculated all its cultural effects in advance. Indeed, the festival’s importance emerged from the relationships it created among objects, scholars, institutions, artistic traditions and audiences. Its wholeness exceeded any collection of predetermined outputs.

Keeler’s recollection therefore reveals a profound irony. Modern corporate management promises efficiency, coordination and innovation. Yet the mechanisms introduced to guarantee these outcomes can make truly ambitious coordination less likely. Institutions become increasingly capable of managing projects while becoming progressively less capable of deciding that an extraordinary project should exist.

The older institution entrusted authority to persons but risked arbitrariness. The contemporary institution distributes authority among procedures but risks paralysis. The challenge is not simply to return to an age when directors and professors were “kings.” It is to recover meaningful professional autonomy without abandoning ethical accountability. Institutions must once again allow competent individuals to exercise judgment, accept responsibility and make consequential decisions.

This distinction is crucial. Accountability should require a person to explain and take responsibility for a decision. Managerialism often operates differently: it replaces personal responsibility with procedural compliance. Once every box has been ticked and every committee consulted, no individual remains fully responsible for either the decision or its absence.

Seen from the perspective of the Desilo Principles, this transformation is an example of managerial fragmentation. The curator sees the cultural whole, but the proposal is divided among finance, marketing, risk, governance and administration. Each department assesses its own fragment rationally, yet no one retains responsibility for the meaning of the whole. The institution may become more administratively accountable while becoming less capable of civilisational imagination.

Keeler’s World of Islam Festival was possible not merely because institutions had fewer rules, but because their custodians were still permitted to act as custodians. Knowledge carried authority. Judgment could lead to action. The lesson of the festival is not that we need new institutional kings. It is that universities and museums cannot fulfil their cultural purposes when those who understand their purposes no longer possess the authority to act upon them.