Who Runs the Artworld

Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics 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.

The book 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.