Nick Bell, in The Steam Roller of Branding is denouncing the “heavily branded” identities of some specific art galleries. He says that, instead of emphasizing the individual artists they are building brands to apprach people. And as a result “it doesn’t matter if you don’t know much about art, you know us, you trust us”, and so you visit the galleries.
I do understand that this way the artists are rather suppressed eventough they are the ones whose works are shown, but it is a kind of symbiosis. Both the galleries and the artist need each other. Without any works people would not go to galleries. And without galleries, artists would not have space to show their artworks.
This is not the first time in history when this kind of situation happens. Sam Jones has posted a link (The_Beauty_of_Books_-_Paperback_Writer) today on facebook to a video about BBC´s last episode of The Beauty of Books programme, the Paperback Writer.
It is about the appearance of the paperback books on the market in the 1930s, and how printed covers became part of decision making when choosing or buying a book. “Employing a colour scheme to denote the genre together with distinctive typography Penguin established a brand identity readers can trust.”
“But having a generic cover meant that no allowances were made for the differing status of individual writers.
All sources were very much reduced down in size. Big name author would have a huge problem with it nowadays. But I think the brand was so strong and they so wanted to be part of that brand, that it was fine. It was a Penguin Book, and that was the main thing.”
What I am saying is that sometimes it is neccessary to use such “inhumane” ways to reach a bigger audience. They might have more positive effects than negative.
LCC MAGD GROUP V 
This is a very interesting parallel that you’ve found. It completely fits with what Nick Bell was talking about that galleries now have this image that says “you can trust us, because we’re the Tate”. Same with Penguin. It is true that this probably increased the audience hugely, but is this a case of quantity vs. quality? It almost seems that people would be turning to Penguin/Tate because it’s the fashionable, trendy thing to do.
If you trust Penguin and therefore read Penguin books, the same way you would trust Tate (perhaps over other galleryes) and therefore go to their exhibitions, doesn’t that take out a lot of exploration on the part of the reader/viewer? It kind of reminds me of the metaphor that nowadays we are jet-skying on the internet rather then being deep sea readers. You would turn to Penguin, or Tate, because you trust the brand and it almost requires no effort on your part to do any discovering on your own.
It’s all laid out for you, even colour coded by genre in the case of the Penguin covers, so easy. Similarly how we are seduced by the ease and immediacy of the internet, the same seems to be happening with cultural branding.