If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Location: Historic Hallway + Mediateque (performance)
Over the past year, Adelaide Blair has conducted an online business school simulation about the financialization of the contemporary art market so people outside that world can understand how it affects their everyday lives - from shrinking tax bases to the kinds of art they are able to see in museums and popular media. She sent newsletters with essays on the art market and provided several opportunities for readers to participate in related activities. These included creating an art fund to flip a piece on eBay, having an AI image generator make work crafted to please the greatest number of people, staging an online show about artists’ collaborations with luxury brands, playing an art collector simulation game, and engaging in a case study about some of the ethical issues behind the sale of the world’s most expensive painting.
At the beginning of her project, Adelaide posed this question: “Art already contains multiple layers of meaning: there is what happens between the art and the artist, the art and the viewer, art as a symbol of status, a representative of culture, and a vehicle for entertainment. Does adding one more layer - financial asset - have any effect on these others?” In the end, she decided it does, and not usually for the better. She believes the financialization of art “takes a powerful, generative force and binds it to such a narrow purpose that meanings no longer matter. Things in this market are not worth money because they are good or interesting, but are good or interesting because they are worth money.” And yet, in spite of knowing all she does about the abject avarice and borderline criminality of the upper end of the art market, she has decided to open her own art advising company, specializing in blue-chip purchases and complex art financial instruments. With her well-researched knowledge of the market and her credentials as an MBA (Foster School of Business, 2008) as well as an MFA (Pacific Northwest College of Art, 2023), she is primed to help buyers take part in opportunities that up to now have been reserved for the ultra-rich. Please help yourself to a brochure in the lobby with more details. She will be giving a related lecture, Global Network: Circles of Corruption in the Art Market, in the PNCA Mediateque on Thursday, Aug 3rd at 4:00 pm.