Mission flexibility for public cultural halls looking at the realities of baumol and bowen s theory and the activities of kansai s two major prefectural cultural halls

In this paper the difficulties for public cultural centers to achieve their missions are illustrated by the comparative study of two big music halls established by prefectures (the Biwako Hall Center for the Performing Arts in Shiga and Hyogo Performing Arts Center). Reflecting the changes of economy and society, the expectation of stakeholders (prefectures as establisher or people as taxpayers) towards public cultural halls changes constantly；the missions of public cultural halls to meet their satisfaction becomes a “moving target”. Baumol/Bowen (Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma) described the justification of financial supports toward public cultural facilities with “4 criteria of externality of culture”. However, also in this paper the difficulty for public cultural halls to achieve these 4 criteria at the same time under the condition of a moving target is illustrated. There are the previous studies that examine whether a public cultural hall satisfies its missions and compare the missions between various public cultural halls. But there is not the study that focuses on that the missions of public cultural halls with a point of view that it is intrinsically movable. This paper studies public music halls supported mainly by tax. However, by making comparative studies on public art museums or public cultural halls that operate mainly with donation such as those in the USA, the results of this study can be deepen further.