The workshop Gatekeepers in the Art Market is part of the International Workshops Series “Tools for the Future: Researching art market Practices from Past to Present”, jointly founded by Elisabetta Lazzaro (Business School for the Creative Industries – University of the Creative Arts, UK), Nathalie Moureau (University Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3) and Adriana Turpin (IESA Art & Culture, Paris and the Society for the History of Collecting, London).
Deadline: 4 Nov 2022
Through individual presentations followed by group discussions, the workshop series aims at bringing together international scholars and professionals from different disciplines, periods of study and areas of practice to confront key issues and develop methodological approaches to analyse and interpret the structures, practices and principles of the art market. Established in June 2018, successive workshops have taken place in Montpellier, Utrecht, London, Rome, Ljubljana, Paris and Rotterdam and have covered topics such as art collectors, the artist as an entrepreneur, the formation and development of new markets, communication strategies, legislation and legal structures, finance, and markets for applied arts, artistic crafts and design.
The School of Art in the College of Art and Design at Louisiana State University will host the next workshop of this successful series, which will be held in Baton Rouge from 14-16 April, 2023.
This workshop focuses on the historic and contemporary role of gatekeepers in the art market, their nature, influence and strategies. By “Gatekeepers,” we mean individuals, as well as institutions, that define taste for a certain kind of art, or who promote a certain type of art in such a way as to change public perception and demand in a permanent fashion. One could think, for instance, of Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun’s lobbying for Netherlandish painting in Paris during the time of the French Revolution, or Jeffrey Deitch and his efforts to establish street art as a permanent component of the art and museum world of today. Gatekeepers are typically placed at different stages of the art-market value chain, and they may include collectors, figures with roles in institutions, corporations and art collections as well as leading dealers, art galleries, fairs, online platforms, curators and consultants.
We invite papers that explore innovative methodologies to interpret the roles and types of impact of gatekeepers in the art market from a wide variety of approaches, theoretical as well as practical. In doing so, we wish to gain insights into the various ways the roles of gatekeepers can be identified and how new research methodologies can contribute to a greater understanding of the complex rationales for their influence on the market.
Areas of proposed discussion will include, among others:
- Types, nature and key features of gatekeepers
- Quantitive and qualitative methods of identifying gatekeepers (e.g., economic methods of tracking the influence of gatekeepers)
- Methodologies for interpreting influence (e.g., sociological, anthropological)
- Impact of digitisation and online markets in changes (e.g., to what extent current digital technologies might create new ways of gatekeeping)
- Innovations in communicating gatekeepers’ strategies (newspapers, Instagram etc.)
- Cultural policy recommendations for stakeholders
Paper submission and deadlines
We welcome submissions of rigorous theoretical or empirical (quantitative and/or qualitative) studies contributing to the topic illustrated above. We particularly appreciate submissions from different disciplines within the social sciences and the humanities as well as interdisciplinary approaches.
Please submit an abstract of 300 words of your proposed paper and a short biography to Darius Spieth (dspieth@lsu.edu) ccd. to Adriana Turpin (a.turpin@iesa.fr) by 4 November. Notice of acceptance will be given by 15 November.
Scientific Committee
- Elisabetta Lazzaro, Business School for the Creative Industries – University of the Creative Arts, UK
- Nathalie Moureau, ART-Dev University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, France
- Darius A. Spieth, |Louisiana State University
- Adriana Turpin, IESA, Paris, France
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