Course 2017-2018 a.y.

Classes: 31 (II sem.)

Instructors:
Class 31: STEFANO BAIA CURIONI

In the last ten years, the contemporary art world has been transformed from a small, relatively stable system into a complex, semi-industrial sector in which financial, political, economic, urban and social interests move at a pace that was even unthinkable only two decades ago. The interaction of these dynamics produces rapid changes in a system whose roles have been historically defined around a small world of galleries, collectors, dealers, institutions and that has been polarized around few dominant urban scenes (New York, Paris, London and in the last part of 20th century, Berlin). These changes imply a multiplicity of opportunities, the appearance of new landscapes for new professionals, and also a number of dead ends. The process involves entrepreneurial opportunities but also raise deep cultural challenges.
The workshop Arts Management and Markets addresses all these issues opening the major in Arts and Heritage management. This course is fit for highly motivated students willing to acquire a professional and competitive edge in the area of Arts management.
The objective of the workshop is twofold.

• On the one side, to help advanced students to refine their specific profile of arts managers consistently with the international job market needs expressed by galleries, dealers, auction houses, exhibition spaces, collectors and artists.
• On the other side, to develop cultural mediation and cultural entrepreneurship capabilities in the perspective of a professional experience strongly characterized by the motivation and the specific understanding of the field, as by the active and enterpreneurial integration in a fast changing and highly internationalized system.

This imply that the course aims to combine the management and entrepreneurship skills with critical, sociological and historical awareness, focusing on the task of cooperating with artists and art productions systems.

The course is divided into two sections.

• One dedicated to the art system (actors, gatekeepers, auction, prices, professions etc) that integrates an historical perspective, direct contact with people that operates in the field at different levels, the analysis of the main transformation of the field.
• One dedicated to the cultural challenges that are influencing the production and the assessment system in the contemporary art (the analysis addresses curatorial issues, historical and critical, analysis of specific works, of specific artists, biographies of specific curators, history of specific exhibitions).

For ttending students
The evaluation for attending students consists of

• Partial written exam that count for 60% of the final evaluation.
• Individual assignment that count for 40% of the final evaluation.

For non attending students

• Written exam.

• The reading list provided by the teacher; Teacher’s slides and notes.
• R. KUSHNER, The Flamethrowers, Scribner, 2013.

For non attending students

• M. LIND, O. VELTHUIS, Contemporary art and its commercial market. A report on current condition and future scenario, Berlin, Sternberg, 2012.
  
• O. VELTHIUS, S. BAIA CURIONI, Global canvases, Oxford University Press, 2015.
  
• L. KARPIK, Valuing the Unique. The Economics of Singularities, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2010.