The right to culture or the right to develop cultural needs

The paper examines the possibility of exercising the right to culture by meeting the needs in the field of culture within the institutional system in Serbia. The unclear definition of the right to culture and the assumption that cultural needs exist "per se" within public practical policies, leads to cause-and-effect mechanisms and systems that result in the decline in the interest of citizens for art and culture, and ultimately in an unexpressed and undeveloped need in the field of culture in a large number of citizens. In the second part of the paper, the results of the empirical research carried out in the Novi Sad theaters are presented, and they point out that a theater with its cultural activities satisfies only the existing cultural needs. Such an arrangement of the institutional cultural system implies indirect discrimination against the rest of the population.