Bringing Art Market Organizations to China: Cross-Border Isomorphism, Institutional Work and its Unintended Consequences (2024)

Official Art Organizations in the Emerging Markets of China and Russia. O. Velthuis and S. Baia Curioni (eds), Canvases and careers in a cosmopolitan world, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 78-101.

White cubes in China: A sociological study of China's emerging market for contemporary art

The Chinese contemporary art market is one of the world’s largest. Hundreds of art galleries, auction houses, artists, critics, and collectors engage in a flourishing art commerce in mainland China. Yet, as recently as the early 1990s, there were no intermediary organisations or stable market practices and conventions, nor were there shared understandings about how the art trade should unfold. In other words, there was no market for contemporary art. This dissertation addresses the question: how has the contemporary art market been emerging in China? Market emergence is a central concern of economic sociology. This study contributes to the understanding of this process by looking at the previously little-studied field of the contemporary art market in China.

Framing considerations in the prc: creating value in the contemporary chinese art market1

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 1025386042000316306, 2007

Framing considerations in the prc: creating value in the contemporary chinese art market

Consumption Markets & Culture, 2004

How to become a judgment device: valuation practices and the role of auctions in the emerging Chinese art market

This article studies the role of judgment devices in the emergence of markets for sin-gularities. In particular, it seeks to understand how specific judgment devices become dominant in resolving uncertainty within these markets. Building on Karpik's seminal theory, we argue that institutional environments (e.g. government regulations, political economic factors, the level of informality within business environments) as well as the level of expertise of consumers, co-determine which devices come to be used in new markets. Empirically, we focus on the emerging market for contemporary art in China. While auctions and auction prices are widely used in valuing contemporary art in China, this is highly illegitimate in international art markets. We argue that auctions act as a judgment device in China because of strong government backing, because other validating organizations, such as museums and art critics, are seen as untrustworthy, and because auctions send strong, easily inter-pretable signals to novice collectors.

Who is on Show? Globalization of Private Contemporary Art Museums in China

Cultural Sociology, 2024

Sociological research on global flows of visual art has primarily investigated artistic presence in the organizations located at the center of the art world. This article shifts the focus to a country outside the traditional center, as it investigates the nationalities of artists who have exhibited at the recently emerged private contemporary art museums in China. It demonstrates that Chinese artists dominate in their exhibitions, which points to a home bias. However, there is also evidence of a cultural hierarchy, with the dominance of a small number of European countries and the USA, and of the regional dominance of East Asian countries. The article demonstrates that a focus on a country outside the center enables us to see the prominence of regional cultural flows in the globalization of visual art. Moreover, it shows that private museums, which are relatively independent of state control, are an important venue to show non-Chinese contemporary artists in present-day China. The increase in non-Chinese artists in exhibitions over time, which is due to the establishment of new private museums, suggests the rising, albeit tentative, centrality of China globally in terms of the importance of its institutions. This article contributes to research on globalization in the sociology of art, and to the understanding of the dynamics of local and transnational cultural flows in contemporary China.

The market metaphors: Making sense of the emerging market for contemporary art in China

Poetics

Art Critics as Middlemen: Navigating State and Market in Contemporary Chinese Art, 1980s-1990s

Art Journal, 2013

The Institutionalization and Legitimatization of Guohua 國畫: Art Societies in Republican Shanghai

Modern China, 2013

High art on a mug: Art merchandise in China's contemporary art market

European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2023

This article investigates the interplay between art, commerce and democratization in the contemporary art market. It studies the roles of art merchandise, such as mugs decorated with images of high art, in the contemporary art market in China. Relying on interviews, observations and other qualitative data, this article demonstrates that the merchandising of contemporary art is legitimate in China. The generation of income and promotion of artists and contemporary art generally emerged as important roles that China's art world participants assign to art merchandise. Art merchandise is fitting for these roles in a consumer society. The prevalence of art merchandising in China stems from a lack of state support for contemporary art, and a specific cultural and historical context that makes people more attuned to accept multiples. This article contributes to the sociology of art, the literature on the democratization of art and arts marketing literature.