Sotheby’s Institute of Art and the Colnaghi Foundation have announced an international conference exploring the intersections between commercial and institutional curatorial practices, inviting submissions that examine diverse art market regions and under-studied global perspectives.
Jointly organized by Sotheby’s Institute of Art and the Colnaghi Foundation, this international conference seeks to explore the aesthetic, intellectual, and financial links between commercial and institutional curatorial practices, their synergies, the ways in which they have influenced each other, and their impact on value systems and market fortunes.
In response to calls to diversify current scholarship, the conference will adopt a broad historical and geographical perspective, with a particular focus on under-studied regions of the art market and the Global South. Positioned at the intersection of academic scholarship and professional practice, its interdisciplinary approach aims to provide fertile ground for discussion among academics, art market professionals, curators, and collectors, encouraging reflection on curatorial networks of exchange and interlocking dialogues, both past and present, between public institutions and the art trade.
Methodological approaches, including oral histories and digital humanities, are welcome. Proposals offering critical perspectives may consider (but are not limited to) the following themes:
- Curatorial strategies employed in the art trade, past and present
- The impact of curatorial choices on market values
- Art dealers working as curators in institutional settings and for private collectors
- Art dealers mediating the acquisition and display of private collections in public institutions
- The curation of diasporic art collections
- The curation and presentation of art market history in public institutions
- The curation of art fairs
- Art dealers curating non-selling exhibitions
- Museum curators as institutional collectors, expert advisers, validators, and occasionally, art-market agents
- Inclusion of privately/commercially owned pieces in museum exhibitions
- Value systems underpinning commercial curatorial practices
- Commercial curation as a speculative financial practice
- Artists as curators and market-makers of their own work
- The commercial curation of cross-collections
Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words for a 25-minute paper, along with a brief biography, to Barbara Lasic at b.lasic@sia.edu by October 31, 2024. Successful papers will be notified by November 15.