The Art Market, Collectors and Agents: Then and Now
19-20 October 2016 at the INHA, Paris
The purpose of our October conference is to develop further the initial conference in July. Papers concentrate on the later period of collecting, from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, in particular considering how the agent has gradually become the consultant/dealer in the modern art market. Thus the conference should allow for a fascinating juxtaposition of historic and contemporary practice. It should also offer a deeper understanding of the private and often hidden side of the market, one that is not represented through the study of auctions alone.
Among the topics that are to be discussed are: Agents in Austria in the seventeenth century, James Thornhill and England in the early eighteenth century, agents in Venice in the eighteenth century; Passavant, Thoré Berger, Gimpel, Samuel Avery and James Hyde or the Catalan poet, Maria Manent as individual agents to private collectors and institutions. Broader topics will include the agents for the National Gallery, London, Asian agents in the nineteenth-century Chinese market, Surrealist artists as agents, agents in the contemporary market in the 1960s and 70s. Our speakers are coming from Europe and the United States, ensuring that we have a wide representation of the field internationally and chronologically.
There will be visits to major collections outside Paris on the Saturday and Sunday.