Public or private? : the artistic institution management in Poland

The article is devoted to the management of public artistic institutions in Poland in the context of a cycle of debates under the shared title: CULTURE AGAINST THE WALL – ABOUT CULTURE & WITH CULTURE. They were organised by the Culture Institute of the Jagiellonian University during the academic year 2013/14. The debates were organised in cooperation with the Foundation for Modjeska and the “Dziennik Polski” newspaper. The topic was concentrated around the privatisation of culture institutions and its consequences – looking for the balance between the mission and economy, the position of the artists, the way of employment, and different types of contracts. The author tries to show the main problems of the functioning of public artistic institutions in Poland (taking into consideration the Baumol’s cost disease), the difficulties in cooperation between the public administration and private companies as well as the lack of models of good practices in the area of cultural policy system in our country. The public-private partnership is too often understood in Poland as a public-social partnership. The public-private partnership is not known (act of law of Dec 2008). To underline the differences between Poland and other European countries, the author shows a few ways of supporting private entities in France, Germany or Czech Republic. There is a lack of such models in Poland.