The acknowledgment of the importance of reputations helps in understanding the extensive presence of innovation in the arts. At first glance, there seems to be little award for innovation in the arts. There are no laws protecting innovation in the arts. Although copyright laws protect actual products such as texts, melodies, dance steps or images, copyright does not protect the innovations in the inherent artistic styles in an artwork.

In theory, patent law could protect some of these innovations, as it does in industry, but in practice, patent law is not really applicable in the arts. The law requires unambiguous criteria. In the case of industrial innovations, these criteria are supplied in the form of specifications. Descriptions of styles, however, will always be ambiguous.

At the same time, the costs of innovations are usually high. Sometimes many years of ‘research’ by one or, numerous artists precede the innovation inherent in a new style. Therefore, without some other system of remuneration the incentive to innovate in the arts might easily disappear. If governments and other donors didn’t finance a large portion of scientific research, the same would happen in the sciences, where patents sometimes are also an unlikely option. Therefore, by analogy, a case can be and has already been made for government subsidies to the arts to help foster innovation.

The necessity of the subsidization of artistic innovation seems logical. It is not however because many creative and performing artists are that eager to innovate. Even though not all art forms value innovation equally, change and development are typical for both the modern creative and the performing arts.

Nevertheless, the influence of museum directors must not be exaggerated. Reputations often begin developing long before these directors become involved. Therefore, the notion of collectives of gatekeepers is more appropriate. They create and assess reputations for innovation.

Even though patent laws cannot be applied to most art innovations, these innovations do not go totally unprotected. Informal barriers controlled by gatekeepers protect reputations for innovation that lead to recognition and indirectly to monetary income, its related to thesis resource in some essay writing. Since artists are indirectly rewarded for their innovations, a degree of appropriation exists.