The arts have always engaged with politics. Yet something decisive has changed in recent years in the relationship between the two. Today the arts are routinely displayed, performed and interpreted through the lens of ideological agendas and charged with solving social challenges. The arts can certainly do good but, in making them all about activism, are we losing sight of the art itself?

Underfunded and undervalued, the arts are in crisis in contemporary Western society. Is over-politicising and over-bureaucratising them the answer? In a wide-ranging discussion of museums and galleries, period dramas, the musical and theatrical canon, and debates about access and arts education, Alexandra Wilson argues that advocating for the arts for all becomes harder when they are labelled as elitist, accused of historic wrongs, or reduced to utilitarian purposes.

Understanding the arts in their historical and political contexts is vital. But today's arts world often anachronistically thrusts the politics of today onto art from the past. Wilson argues that it is time for some fresh thinking. She presents an optimistic vision for rediscovering the enjoyment, meaning and sense of community that can be derived from the arts, when approached on their own terms.

Alexandra Wilson is a prize-winning musicologist, cultural historian and arts writer. She comments regularly on cultural matters for national newspapers, magazines and BBC radio, and writes essays for major arts organisations. Her books include Puccini's La bohème, Opera in the Jazz Age: Cultural Politics in 1920s Britain and, most recently, Someone Else's Music: Opera and the British, which traces changing cultural attitudes in Britain from 1920 to today. Formerly Professor of Music and Cultural History at Oxford Brookes University, she is now a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford.