Navigating the Online Art Market

The contemporary art market is undergoing profound changes as it adopts digital technologies in the presentation, commercialization, and analysis of artworks, as well as their certification, storage and production. Since the late 1990s, different actors in the art market from auction houses to entrepreneurs, artists to large galleries, have sought new ways of buying and selling art online– some more successfully than others.

This course will explore the evolution and current developments of the online art market over the last two-and-a-half decades as it rapidly grows and adapts to new demands from its customers and reaches out to wider audiences. We will analyze different trends and examine case studiesin order to understand how art is bought and sold, and what has led certain models to fail or succeed.

With knowledge of the histories and potential futures of selling art online, participants will be able to develop their own strategies for venturing into the online art market. Each week, we will discuss these subjects to elaborate an overview of the current art market and draft a prototype of an online gallery, platform or service dedicated to contemporary digital art.