ART 368 The Business of Art

The global art market has recently been valued at close to $50bn - a rise of over 60% since the global financial crisis. These figures are driven by demand from China and other emerging markets, as well as the growing phenomenon of the artist bypassing dealers as a market force in his/her own right. This new textbook integrates, updates and enhances the popular aspects of two well-regarded texts - Understanding International Arts Markets and The Art Business. Topics covered include: Emerging markets in China, East Asian, South East Asian, Brazilian, Russian, Islamic and Indian art, Art valuation and investment, Museums and the cultural sector.

Art is produced, circulated, consumed and disseminated within an economic system--it depends on money for its creation, for the livelihood of its makers, and for its distribution. In this sense, art can be understood as an enterprising activity. However, profit-making is rarely the primary goal of artists, and indeed the entanglement of art with enterprise generates significant aesthetic, conceptual, philosophical and ethical challenges for contemporary art practice. Social enterprise has emerged from this complex terrain with the promise of an alternative model of economic organisation in the arts.

Art Business Today: 20 Key Topics is an accessible and comprehensive companion to the business of art written by leading experts in the field, many of them based at Sotheby's Institute of Art. It is an essential reference book for students in the areas of art business, arts management, the creative and cultural industries, art history, and general business and management. The key topics covered range from larger-scale questions about the globalisation, funding, and ethics of the art market, to entries more focussed on art objects themselves, such as connoisseurship, authenticity and conservation.

The rapidly changing and evolving art market might appear to be chaotic to the casual observer, with new highs, potential lows, and tastes and fashions changing season to season. Economists, however, view the actions of buyers and sellers as constituting an identifiable market. They have, forsome decades, studied such issues as artistic productivity and "death effects" on prices, investment returns, and on the basis of the behavior and estimated prices in auction markets.

In The Work of Art, Alison Gerber explores these art worlds to investigate who artists are (and who they're not), why they do the things they do, and whether a sense of vocational calling and the need to make a living are as incompatible as we've been led to believe. Listening to the stories of artists from across the United States, Gerber finds patterns of agreements and disagreements shared by art-makers from all walks of life. For professionals and hobbyists alike, the alliance of love and money has become central to contemporary art-making, and danger awaits those who fail to strike a balance between the two.

Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics examines, using transdisciplinary strategies, the economics and mythologies of today's global artworld. It unmasks the complex web of relationships that now exist between, high profile curators, collectors, museum trustees and corporate sponsors, and the historic and ongoing complicity between the art and money markets. It also examines alternative models being deployed by curators and artists influenced by the 2008 global financial crisis and the international socio-political Occupy movement.

This book investigates the history of the modern artist whose new connections with the exhibition of art profoundly changed the definition of art, the artist's view of himself, the problem's of the artist, and the artist's social status.