Art Market Practices A Move towards Practice-Based Arts Marketing Research

Abstract

The research field of arts marketing has been growing since the 1990’s and there are today journals, textbooks and conferences entirely dedicated to the field. Relatively absent within arts marketing research, however, are theoretical and methodological approaches that explicitly direct its attention to practices. This conceptual paper suggests a move towards a practice perspective in arts marketing research. As art markets constantly change mainly in terms of technology, competition, collaborations, legislations and etcetera, it could be assumed that networks within the art markets too are in constant flux. The paper stresses that market studies informed by market practice theory can provide an appreciation of the constructing and reconstructing mechanisms of different art markets. Practices can broadly be defined in categories of exchange, normalizing and representational practices. The purpose of this conceptual paper is hence to discuss and suggest a practice approach to arts marketing research that studies market practices in order to understand how they involve in shaping different art markets. Questions that become important to ask in future research are: how are these networks constructed, who are the key actors, what are the practices, how are they performing marketing and how is marketing reconstructing the art markets? It is concluded that studies on practices in art markets will enrich the understanding of how art markets are constructed and will contribute to the body of knowledge in arts marketing literature and marketing theory in general.