TIAMSA Konferenz Berlin 2022

The Image of the Art Market. Just What Is It that Makes the Art Trade Look so Different, so Alarming?

Datum: 12/09/22
Ort: Technische Universität Berlin (Hauptgebäude, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin)

Ort: Liebermann Villa (Colomierstr. 3, 14109 Berlin)
Datum: 13/09/22

Programm TIAMSA 2022
Abstracts TIAMSA 2022

++Die Titel sind in der jeweiligen Vortragssprache wiedergegeben.++

The art trade has always been viewed with great fascination, but also with scepticism and even suspicion. Although its worldwide turnover is relatively modest in comparison with most other markets for luxury goods, the art market’s mechanisms, its peak prices and its scandals, attract a seemingly disproportionate amount of public attention. This attention comes not only from the press and (social) media, but also from film and fiction, where extravagant art trade settings speak of passion and money while dealers are variously cast as educated, smart, eccentric or untrustworthy.

The art trade’s flirtations with the limelight and dealers’ careful self-fashioning of their image have a long history. For time immemorial, collecting art has been an essential part of public and private representation and the trade’s role in this system becomes increasingly evident today. Again and again, art market players have operated with glamorous gatherings and media-rich appearances at fairs, auctions and special events. Art dealers have also promoted their business by polishing their expertise, networks and appearance, thus underscoring the social functions of art. Generations of dealers, even across dynasties, have maintained their position in the international marketplace by socializing with celebrities, politicians, museum professionals and scholars. Indeed some of them, such as Pierre Jean Mariette, John Smith, or Frits Lugt, were distinguished scholars themselves.

Scientific expertise, connoisseurship and institutional clout thus sometimes appear as odd bedfellows of commercial acumen. Similarly, calls for transparency regularly clash with the players’ wish for discretion, while due diligence – also with regard to the origin of objects – sometimes assumes a secondary role when overshadowed by deft marketing strategies or even manipulative operations. Indeed, the often contradictory magnetic fields at work in this market may be fundamental to its high flying public profile. The TIAMSA Conference 2022, organized in cooperation with Technische Universität Berlin and the Liebermann Villa Berlin, aims to shed light on the hitherto rarely studied image of the art market, its players and their self-fashioning.

PROGRAMME

Monday 12 September 2022 – Technische Universität Berlin
(Hauptgebäude, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Room H 3005) 

09:00 Registration

09:30 Welcome / Introduction
Meike Hopp (Technische Universität Berlin, DE)
Johannes Nathan (TIAMSA)

Session 1 – The Larger Picture
Chair: Veronika Korbei (TIAMSA)

10:00 Sarah Bakkali (Château de Versailles, FR)
“Art dealers” in Search of Legitimacy: The Shady Image of Art Market Players in Paris at the End of the Eighteenth Century

10:30 Joy Cador (Ecole Normale Supérieure)
Making Value from Ancient Cities to Victorian London: Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Painting as an Image of the Victorian Art Market

11:00 Coffee Break

11:30 Temenuga Trifonova (York University, Toronto, CA)
The Art Market in Cinema

12:00 Astrid Mania (Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, DE)
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Contemporary Artworks Performing the Art Market

12:30 Discussion

13:00 Lunch Break

Session 2 – Portrait and Image
Chair: Christian Huemer (Belvedere Research Center, Vienna, AT)

14:30 Babette Claassen (Independent Dealer and Consultant, NL)
Between Connoisseurship and Commerce: The Image of the Dutch Art Dealer in Contemporary Art between 1850 and 1917

15:00 Marie Tavinor (Royal Academy, London, UK)
The Maecenas who Sold the Trove: Duveen’s Image in the Press, 1920s and 1930s

15:30 Coffee Break

16:00 Gitta Ho (Ministry of Culture, Paris, FR)
“I posed a number of times.” The Portraits of the Parisian Art Dealer Ambroise Vollard

16:30 Natasha Degen (FIT – State University, New York, USA)
Being Involved: The Image of Pop Art Collectors in the 1960s

17:00 Discussion

18:00 Round Table: Walking on a Tightrope? How the Market deals with its Image
Nikolaus Bernau (Free Journalist, Berlin)
Katharina Garbers-von Boehm (Büsing Müffelmann Theye Attorneys at Law, Berlin)
Meike Hopp (Technische Universität Berlin)
Michael Hutter (Berlin Social Science Center)
Wolfgang Wittrock (Art Dealer, Berlin)
Moderator: Johannes Nathan (TIAMSA)

20:00 Dinner (self-paid)

Tuesday 13 September 2022 – Liebermann Villa am Wannsee
(Colomierstr. 3, 14109 Berlin)

09:15 Registration

Session 3 – Tools and Devices
Chair: Marie Tavinor (Royal Academy, London, UK)

09:30 Diana Davis (Independent, UK)
A Glimpse of Immortality: Dealers and the Cult of the Catalogue, 1880-1920

10:00 Biancalucia Maglione (University of Florence, IT)
“Even the intellect has its rights”. The «Bollettino della Galleria del Milione» as a tool for Ghiringhellis’ self-representation and market declarations, between controversy and innovation (1932-1941)

10:30 Coffee Break

11:00 Alycen Mitchell (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
Sotheby’s ‘PB84’: A Blueprint for Capitalising on the New Market for Collectibles 1968-1982

11:30 Anita Archer (University of Melbourne, AU)
Nationalism, tears and pedagogy: how Sotheby’s and Christie’s leverage image to dominate the global fine art market

12:00 Discussion 

12:30 Lunch Break

Session 4 – Pulling the Strings
Chair: Kim Oosterlinck (Université libre de Bruxelles, BE)

14:00 Joshua Eversfield Jenkins (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Nineteenth-century Complaints about Speculative Investment in Contemporary Art in Comparison to Today 

14:30 Patrizia Cappellini (Independent, IT)
The Image of the Art Dealer Between Private and Public: the Case of Elia Volpi, Merchant, Patron-Entrepreneur and sui generis Connoisseur

15:00 Coffee Break 

15:30 Dorothee Wimmer and Gabriele Zöllner (Forum Kunst und Markt, TU Berlin, DE)
“Rembrandt Glamour” in Germany: Provenances, Markets, and Museums around 1900

16:00 Catherine B. Scallen (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA)
Loan Exhibitions at the Detroit Institute of Arts: Joseph Duveen behind the Scenes

16:30 Final Discussion

17:00 Conference End

18:00 TIAMSA Annual General Meeting, followed by dinner (self-paid)

Conference Registration

• The conference is open to all but registration is required. The conference will be held in a hybrid format.
• Please register by sending an e-mail to inna.schill@artmarketstudies.org, indicating if you would like to attend online or in person. Please register by 10 September 2022.
• Attendance is free for TIAMSA members. Non-members who would like to attend are kindly invited to join TIAMSA (regular £20 / concessions £10 per annum) via the following link: https://www.artmarketstudies.org/join/register/ With your TIAMSA membership you support a thriving art market studies hub with currently more than 400 members worldwide.

Conference Committee

Susanna Avery-Quash, National Gallery London, UK
Meike Hopp, Technische Universität Berlin, DE
Veronika Korbei, Independent, Vienna, AT
Johannes Nathan, Nathan Fine Art / TU Berlin, DE
Olav Velthuis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, NL
Lucy Wasensteiner, Liebermann Villa, Berlin, DE

Conference Managers

Sharon Dowley, TIAMSA Coordinator
Inna Schill, TIAMSA Coordinator

Conference Venues

• 12 September: Technische Universität Berlin, Hauptgebäude, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin
• 13 September: Liebermann Villa am Wannsee, Colomierstr. 3, 14109 Berlin

For questions please contact Inna Schill (inna.schill@artmarketstudies.org)

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