It is Arthur Danto ("The Artworld" and two later essays) who has most thoroughly and most influentially argued that the concept of art is essentially tied to historical conditions and to the existence of art theory: it is only through the artworld's acceptance of a theory that a snow-shovel can be constituted as a Duchamp readymade, i.e., an artwork. Danto has not yet made it very clear what counts as a theory, or as acceptance of a theory, on his view; or exactly why, in singing songs or painting masks, people living before the birth of philosophy could not have been creating artworks without knowing they were doing so -- just as they built homes without a school of engineering and made laws without a jurisprudential philosophy. (For further critical discussion of Danto's views see "Is Art Essentially Institutional?", Anita Silvers on "The Artworld Discarded," Colin Lyas on "Danto and Dickie on Art," and Richard Sclafani's questions in "Artworks.") Of course in any society, what gets created, or approved as good art, or exhibited and distributed, largely depends on what those who have control, political or commercial or theological, will allow; and they may have various motives or justifications. So art is inextricably involved in institutions. But to sort out the social problems of art we need, in my opinion, a general account of artistic activity (aesthetically intended arranging) that is logically independent of art theory, tradition, or social institutions.