Aestheticized Institutionalism and Wollheim's Dilemma

In The Aesthetic Function of Art (2004), I was mainly concerned to show how my “new aestheticism” can meet standard objections to aestheticism, but I have come to realize that, since it is as much a new institutionalism as it is a new aestheticism, its institutionalist aspect requires defense as much as its aestheticist aspect does. In this article, I show how a judicious aestheticizing of George Dickie's second version of the institutional theory of art, incorporating fundamental features of my own view, can meet what seems to me to be the most serious objection to institutionalism in general, the dilemma famously proposed by Richard Wollheim.