Arts Management & Cultural Policy at Queen’s University Belfast is delighted to host Professor Eleonora Redaelli of the University of Oregon (USA).

This presentation will draw from her latest (open access) publication Invisible Cultural Policy in America: How Public Administration Shapes Culture (Edward Elgar, 2025). The talk will examine the often-overlooked role of the U.S. government in shaping cultural life. She will explore how public administration fosters a pluralistic cultural landscape through multilevel governance and diverse democratic values. Focusing on the arts, humanities, and historic preservation, the talk traces key legislation that legitimised federal involvement and the evolution of cultural federalism across national and state agencies. To illustrate this process, the presentation provides national examples of programming as well as cases from Oregon, Minnesota, Maryland, and New Mexico. It also highlights intellectual debates that influenced shifting interpretations of cultural domains. Amid this fragmented governance, the concept of a pluralistic public culture emerges as a unifying principle aimed at strengthening democracy.