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Flash Points: Art+Economics, Looking Back & Moving Forward

Srdjan Loncar "Value" (2008), As exhibited at Prospect.1 New Orleans

Srdjan Loncar, "Value" (2008), as exhibited at the Old U.S. Mint during Prospect.1 New Orleans

Money is on everyone’s mind but particularly for those in the art world, which faces one of the most difficult economic climates in ages. The last few months on this blog we’ve posted about art and economics, looking at them from various angles and reflecting on a topic to which there is never a conclusion. Here are some highlights from this newly concluded Flash Points topic, “What is the Value of Art?

Beth Allen kicked off the discussion:

Buried within questions about the economics of art are assumptions, and often judgments, about its value that beg to be examined: How is the value of an artist’s intellectual versus physical labor calculated? Are collectible works valued differently than ephemeral projects?

Ben Street highlighted parallels between the world of money and art:

[they]…may not be equivalent, but they are remarkably alike. As Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri put it, “in exchanging art for money, we exchange one abstraction for another.”

Thomas Micchelli offered his own insights:

Money may be a shared commodity but it fractures perception; not only is it the most unreliable historical indicator of aesthetic value, but when art is rendered into a trophy and displayed as such, its role as a piece of communal experience, owned by all, is diminished.

Lila Kanner pointed out that the artist’s role is crucial in our understanding of art economics and that “currency in art has a beautiful double meaning – it’s about cultural relevance as well as economics.”

Jackson Pollock's "No.5, 1948" (1948) is, according to Wikipedia, the
most expensive painting in history.

Then there were the tales of financial woe, from the impact that the economic downturn has had on museums (more) to artists looking to be fairly compensated for their work in museums.

Some bloggers looked at artists who thrive in the capitalist system, others sought out alternative economies, including one Chicago-based research institute (InCUBATE) that critically examines models for arts funding, and the Exhibition & Free Store in New York, which sought to “demonstrate the value of free art, free imagination, free form, and free rewards.”

The role of the arts administrator was raised by Tracy Candido, who reminded us, “I am an arts administrator, which is arguably the second invisible position in line behind the artist” and Richard McCoy wrote about the question of value from an art conservator’s point of view.

Julia Steinmetz took a different approach to the question of art’s value and cast her net into the body of Adrian Piper’s work to suggest that “art’s value is its capacity to direct our attention to a particular object, image, sound, environment, or situation.”

Among the key posts of the last few months, there were numerous interviews that focused on economics in different ways, including:

Finally, we looked at the state of federal arts funding by the numbers and then spoke to the House Arts Caucus co-chairs about the state of federal funds for the arts.

For future reading and some hot topics in the news related to Art+Economics, try these:

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