Academic Sessions: London 2008
Circuits of Exchange and Valuation: the London Art Market in an International Network, 1850–1950
Session Convenor:
Anne Helmreich, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH 44106 anne.helmreich@case.edu
Speakers:
Mark Westgarth (University of Salford) ‘A Cruise through the Brokers’: Wardour Street and the London antique and curiosity markets in the mid-19th century
Pamela Fletcher (Bowdoin College) The Grand Tour on Bond Street: Cosmopolitanism and the commercial art gallery
Patricia De Montfort (University of Glasgow) International Networks, Periodical Publication and the London Art Market (1880–1914)
Pamela Gerrish Nunn (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) Finding a Seat inside the Big Tent
Morna O’Neill (Vanderbilt University) Decorative Politics and Direct Pictures: Hugh Lane in Dublin and Cape Town
Abigail Harrison Moore (University of Leeds) Furniture in the Dock: Issues of authenticity, race, and class in the London furniture trade
Alexandra MacGilp (Tate Britain/ University of Reading) Matthew Smith, the London Art Market and the Tate
Alexander Stephenson (University of East London) Strategies of Display and Modes of Visuality in London Art Galleries in the Inter-war Years
Session Abstract:
London, as a metropolitan centre and World City, has been a crucial point of intersection in the networks of circulation and exchange making up the international art market. This session investigates how the London art market operated in dynamic relationship with other important economic centres to establish circuits of exchange and processes of valuation between the 1850s, when the London market became a pronounced presence on the world stage, through the turn of the century, when the London market was the strongest in world, to the 1950s, when New York, in the wake of World War II, displaced London.
Establishing this history of the international art trade, as networked through London, entails investigating the specific mechanisms, practices, and strategies that have contributed to this strong market dynamic as well as the relationships between the institutions of the marketplace – such as art dealers and auction houses – and other, seemingly more disinterested art institutions, such as academies and museums. Art criticism, able to reach wider and increasingly diverse audiences by virtue of the continued expansion of the press, and art history, emergent as a professional discipline in these decades, were likewise implicated and embedded in the instruments of the marketplace and contributed to concepts of value and formations of taste that helped drive collecting patterns for individuals as well as museums and civic collections. Such critical and theoretical discourses, this session argues, cannot be separated from the larger economic framework.
The session explores the techniques and technologies of display, distribution, advertising, and retail as well as patterns of critical reception and consumption that fuelled the London art market and sustained the larger network in which it was embedded. These strategies were developed and utilised to reach a multi-faceted public. In short, this session seeks to reconstruct the role played by the London art market and its partners in creating and determining economic and aesthetic value in an international, cosmopolitan context.
Anne Helmreich, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH 44106 anne.helmreich@case.edu
Speakers:
Mark Westgarth (University of Salford) ‘A Cruise through the Brokers’: Wardour Street and the London antique and curiosity markets in the mid-19th century
Pamela Fletcher (Bowdoin College) The Grand Tour on Bond Street: Cosmopolitanism and the commercial art gallery
Patricia De Montfort (University of Glasgow) International Networks, Periodical Publication and the London Art Market (1880–1914)
Pamela Gerrish Nunn (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) Finding a Seat inside the Big Tent
Morna O’Neill (Vanderbilt University) Decorative Politics and Direct Pictures: Hugh Lane in Dublin and Cape Town
Abigail Harrison Moore (University of Leeds) Furniture in the Dock: Issues of authenticity, race, and class in the London furniture trade
Alexandra MacGilp (Tate Britain/ University of Reading) Matthew Smith, the London Art Market and the Tate
Alexander Stephenson (University of East London) Strategies of Display and Modes of Visuality in London Art Galleries in the Inter-war Years
Session Abstract:
London, as a metropolitan centre and World City, has been a crucial point of intersection in the networks of circulation and exchange making up the international art market. This session investigates how the London art market operated in dynamic relationship with other important economic centres to establish circuits of exchange and processes of valuation between the 1850s, when the London market became a pronounced presence on the world stage, through the turn of the century, when the London market was the strongest in world, to the 1950s, when New York, in the wake of World War II, displaced London.
Establishing this history of the international art trade, as networked through London, entails investigating the specific mechanisms, practices, and strategies that have contributed to this strong market dynamic as well as the relationships between the institutions of the marketplace – such as art dealers and auction houses – and other, seemingly more disinterested art institutions, such as academies and museums. Art criticism, able to reach wider and increasingly diverse audiences by virtue of the continued expansion of the press, and art history, emergent as a professional discipline in these decades, were likewise implicated and embedded in the instruments of the marketplace and contributed to concepts of value and formations of taste that helped drive collecting patterns for individuals as well as museums and civic collections. Such critical and theoretical discourses, this session argues, cannot be separated from the larger economic framework.
The session explores the techniques and technologies of display, distribution, advertising, and retail as well as patterns of critical reception and consumption that fuelled the London art market and sustained the larger network in which it was embedded. These strategies were developed and utilised to reach a multi-faceted public. In short, this session seeks to reconstruct the role played by the London art market and its partners in creating and determining economic and aesthetic value in an international, cosmopolitan context.