“8+1 Questions About the Art Market” | Barcelona Symposium 2024

TALKING GALLERIES
BARCELONA SYMPOSIUM 2024 - 10TH EDITION
22-23 January 2024
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
Closing lecture
8+1 QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ART MARKET EVERYONE SHOULD BE ASKING THEMSELVES NOW
Speaker
Paco Barragán, Int. PhD and curator
In this closing session, Spanish curator and art theorist Paco Barragán will address in a thought-provoking manner some of the key issues that are characterizing today’s fast-paced global art market.
Is the artworld responding to the brutal technological and digital transformations of early 21st century society with innovation and adaptation or does the traditional hierarchical and conservative attitude prevail? Following are the 8 + 1 hot topics that every art market member should be askingthemselves right now:
1.Why is the Art World still Considered Inaccessible compared to Other Cultural Sectors?
2.Why is there so Much Kitsch in the Art World Lately?
3.Why are Collectors Less and Less Savvy?
4.Why Must Museums Deaccession Works from their Permanent Collections?
5.Why are Art Critics Irrelevant?
6.Why Don’t Gallerists Sell?
7.Why do Curators Fail? (Or, The Failure of the White Cube.)
8.Why is Art a Bad Investment?
And
9.Why is Art still so Popular?
The world is changing at an unprecedented speed. Is the artworld ready to take up the pace or is its dyed-in-the-wool philosophy a handicap for embracing the potentialities that the advent of the digital revolution 30 years ago promised?

[@cree8vision]

Very nice summary of some of the history of western museums and galleries.
If the white cube is no longer relevant, what is the alternative?
If critics and curators are irrelevant and art doesn't sell and is not a good investment, why continue to do art?
I often think about art made in the Renaissance and Baroque periods where a lot of art was commissioned by wealthy (religious) patrons. Now art is produced solely from the ideas of the artist without being filtered through the wants and needs of the patron.
So where are we now?