Researching art market: tools for the future

The ambit of creativity, art, and the freedom of mankind is based on a different principle, the social and democratic principle of an equitable administration of justice. Therefore, art is not degraded by market abuse; it remains absolutely intact. (Beuys, interview 1971). 

The sixth International Workshops Series “Tools for the Future: Researching Art Market Practices from Past to Present”, earlier announced in the CrowdCul website, took place virtually on the 11^th and the 12^th of June. With a warm welcoming introduction followed by a keynote and four sessions each day, the event added insightful reflections and relevant evidence on the art market structure, challenges and contemporary opportunities. More than 30 scholars, professors, and practitioners joined this event presenting different cases and diverse methodologies for comprehending the art market in its diverse and broad scope.  

In short, the two keynote speeches and eight sessions addressed the financial strategies of the art market, traveling back in history, passing different countries and continents, and discussing contemporary matters, such as the pandemics and digitalization. The workshop sessions covered the following topics: Privatization and financialization of art; Government, Subsidies and Taxation; Private Investment; Digitization and New Financial Structures; Agents & Agencies; Intermediaries’ Strategies; Museums’ strategies; and Economic Valuation. 

In session four, Digitization and New Financial Structures, two of the three presented works were about crowdfunding. The CROWDCUL project partners, Elisabetta Lazzaro (Business School for the Creative Industries, University for the Creative Arts) – who is also in the scientific and organising committee of the event – and Daniel Nordgård (NORCE) presented their research in this session asking whether “Crowdfunding for visual artists: alternative or complementary source of income?”. This question relates to one of the work packages in the CROWDCUL where we explore if crowdfunding mechanism acts as a substitution or a supplement to the traditional funding in the culture sector.  

Once more, the perspective of cultural crowdfunding is an exciting research matter embedded in the art market structures, and it is still under-explored in the literature. Stay tuned in the CROWDCUL project to follow what it is to come!