Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics

Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics

“The book will inform, provoke, and entertain, and will appeal to anyone with an interest in the role of art in contemporary society. 
Professor David Throsby, Macquarie University

About the Book
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.

Professor Brad Buckley is an artist, urbanist, activist and Professorial Fellow at Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of the VCA and MCM, the University of Melbourne. His work, which has been shown internationally for over twenty-five years, operates at the intersection of installation, theatre and performance, investigates questions of cultural control, democracy, freedom and social responsibility.  

Associate Professor John Conomos is an artist, critic and writer, and Associate Professor and Principal Fellow at Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of the VCA and MCM, the University of Melbourne. Conomos has exhibited extensively both locally and internationally across a variety of media: video art, new media, photo-performance, installations and radiophonic art. He is a prolific contributor to art, film and media journals and a frequent keynote speaker and participant in conferences, fora and seminars.