Management and Marketing - Research Publications
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ItemArt Investment Collections: Considerations for Museums(MuseumsEtc, 2021)This chapter examines conflicting views about whether to consider artwork as a financial asset, considering potential tradeoffs in terms of stakeholder trust, and suggests a museum investment collection as one option. This would not engender stakeholder concerns about selling art in the permanent collection. It also affirms museum association guidance that proceeds from sales of permanent collection items can only be used for new acquisitions or direct care.
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ItemPhysical and Epistemic Objects in Museum Conservation Risk Management(Springer Palgrave Macmillan, 2018-01-23)This chapter highlights the paradoxical effects of increased price data in markets with difficult-to-value products where non-price factors are highly relevant. In the fine art market, the growth of market information providers facilitated access to auction price data, beneficial in a market noted for its clandestine dealings. Drawing from inductive ethnographic research, the paper notes complex outcomes from increased data availability, as auction prices can be seen as an indicator of an artwork’s value. The findings deconstruct factors of supply, demand and multiple prices in the art market, highlighting important non-price factors in valuation, which complicate provider claims of art market transparency. Unpacking the process through which expert “thick” valuation transforms raw price data into comparables and then valuations helps to explain continuing differences in valuation, with buyers prone to understand past prices as market or reference prices, rather than raw materials for valuation that are adjusted for complexity. This contributes to an understanding of both advantages and predictable problems from increased price data in markets that contain substantial qualitative and non-numerical data, as evaluative frictions can occur even in the absence of clearly defined alternative valuation methods. This develops productive linkages between critical transparency and the valuation and evaluation research.
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ItemThe Financialization of Art(Oxford University Press, 2012)The financialization of art merits the attention of social scientists studying finance for a number of reasons. First of all, in spite of the fact that the investment potential of art has long been recognized (section one), its recent financialization has been resisted by both members of the art world and of the financial markets. Members of the art world have opposed the definition of art as an asset class and the commensuration efforts which this definition entails (see second section). Members of the financial community, in contrast, have hesitated to recognize art as a valid asset class because of the art market's lack of liquidity, transparency, and standardization. Their opposition has, however, gradually eroded in a three-stage process of increasing rationalization and scientization of the market. As part of this process, art investment has been legitimated by adopting role models, organizational blueprints, and market devices from the world of finance (section three). Economists have played a key role in this process of rationalization and scientization: they have developed art price indexes that, by rendering art recognizable as an asset class, function as boundary objects (see fourth section). But in spite of the market-making efforts of economists and other "institutional entrepreneurs" (c.f., Battilana, Leca, and Boxenbaum 2009), the financialization of art is hardly complete. This is predominantly caused by continuing information asymmetries and failure to construct liquidity in art markets (section five). [Excerpt]
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ItemHostile Worlds and Questionable Speculation: Recognizing the Plurality of Views About Art and the Market(Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2010)The “hostile worlds” view argues that money corrupts the meaning of art, but some suggest this is a dated concept in describing the art market. Instead of dismissing this view, this paper argues that we need a typology of beliefs about art, money and commensuration; what could be understood as a pluralist understanding. Based on ethnographic research on the high-end contemporary art market in New York and London, I find that collectors, investors and art world experts often have different views about the relationship between art and money. This recognition is significant because art is a symbolic good with assigned, rather than intrinsic value, meaning that the value of art can be damaged for people holding hostile worlds views when the mechanisms that maintain the appropriate balance between art and money break down or are disregarded. In this sense, hostile worlds views create a performativity effect.