Ebook: Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics

Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics includes chapters by Amelia Jones, Peter Booth & Arjo Klamer, Juli Carson, John Welchman, Brett Levine, Bruce Barber, Carol Gilchrist & Jennifer A. McMahon, Ian McLean, Adam Geczy, Stevphen Shukaitis & Joanna Figiel, Michael Birchall, Gregory Sholette and John von Sturmer.

The book examines the economics and mythologies of today’s global artworld. It unmasks the complex web of relationships that now exist among high-profile curators, collectors, museum trustees and corporate sponsors, and the historic and ongoing complicity between the art and money markets. Who Runs the Artworld examines alternative models being deployed by curators and artists influenced by the 2008 global financial crisis and the international socio-political Occupy movement, with a particular focus on a renewed activism by artists. This activism is coupled with an institutional and social critique led by groups such as Liberate Tate, the Precarious Workers Brigade and Strike Debt. Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics brings together a diverse range of thinkers who draw on the disciplines of art theory, social sciences and cultural economics, and curatorship and the lived experience of artists. The contributors to this book are, in their respective contexts, working at the forefront of these compelling issues.