History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Teamlab Research, Chinchen Liu

MA Theses

teamLab undoubtedly opened a new era of art. It allows professionals in multi-industries to use the latest science and technology to create art, they are all popular for local audiences from Japan to the United States, from Italy to China, wherever they go. As a significant representative form of the trendy show and immersive exhibition, teamLab's works are completely different from the past in terms of creative logic, exhibition experience, and collection methods. By going through the development history of teamLab, this article studies the characteristics of its exhibitions, audience, and the connection with traditional art, in order to explore …

A Study On The Commercial Promotion Mode Of Contemporary Young Artists In China Taking Art Nova 100 As An Example, Han Le

MA Theses

Nowadays, young artists have increasingly become a significant part of the art market in China since there has been a recent emergence of China's art market. Therefore, their personal growth and development would greatly impact the future of art market. With the support of relevant economic and political policies from the government, China has initiated many innovative characterized business modes of cultivating young artists. By looking at Art Nova 100, a quite typical art project of recent years in China, this paper firstly deals with the actual living situation of contemporary young Chinese artist together with considerations for specific historical …

The Explosion Development Of Chinese Contemporary Art Market From 2000 To 2015, Yaning Wang

MA Theses

After Chinese Culture Revolution, the brand new chapter was approaching which opened for the modern Chinese art history; Chinese contemporary art has been deepened understanding by the art market. In the context of an emerging market, art is as much a matter of cultural economy as socio-politics. Thus the thesis will focus on the challenges facing the market and how tradition and economics providing the framework for the sustainability of art market. It will present a historical overview of emergence of Chinese contemporary art the period of 2000 to 2015 and expose the unbreakable bind between the development of its …

Story Of Twin Cities, Who Will Be The Next Storm Center Of Art Fairs?, Rui Bian

MA Theses

Since 2000, with the rapid development of China's economy, the evolution of contemporary art fairs in China has been accelerated. This paper takes two representative cities, Beijing and Shanghai, as examples. In the past one decade, Shanghai and Beijing have respectively led the trend of contemporary art market due to various internal and external factors. This paper uses PEST model to analyze, trying to find out who will be the next center of contemporary art in the next ten years.

The first part of this paper mainly starts from the differentiations in policies and regional distributions of Chinese contemporary art …

How Does Contemporary Artists Consolidate Their Success And Achievements Through Social Media Platform Such As Instagram? : Case Study Of Successful Co-Existing Relationship Developed Between Contemporary Artists Ai Weiwei And Kaws With Their Instagram Account, Rouchen Yao

MA Theses

In the following thesis, I would compare and contrast the two art world phenomenon:Ai Weiwei and KAWS, whom have very distinctive artistic focus and style. And how the two artists utilize their social media platform to achieve different purposes and reflect different values. In the past few years, due to internet accessibility to the art world, online and social media platforms have become an intermediary between the art world and the masses, giving everyone access to art. Being household names from the art world, both of the artists generated a large number of fans on their social media platform of …

Market Value Analysis Of Takashi Murakami's Artwork Under Howard Becker's Theory, Liu Yi-Ding

MA Theses

This paper is an analysis about the artist Takashi Murakami. As a representative of the corporate artist, he is favored by the Art business world while being criticized by many people. This paper adopts American sociologist Howard Becker's art world theory as a research tool to observe that the construction of Murakami and his art market is not the growth of genius, but the result of collective cooperation. Based on two decades of data on the art trade, Murakami has made his unique brand of ultra-flat theory and otaku work. These labels, along with internalization and external marketing, eventually gave …

The Demand For Women Who Painted: Recent Art Market Trends For Female Artists Of The Premodern Era, Cristina Demiany

MA Theses

A number of events highlighting female artists who lived and worked before the year 1900 are currently appearing in the art world. In consideration of this expanding cultural activity, this paper explores recent art market behavior around premodern female painters by examining sales of their work at auction between the years 1998 and 2019. The larger questions around such an analysis include assessing if the work of premodern female artists presents a new investment opportunity for collectors, and if it could also provide a means of invigorating the Old Master market. Three case studies representing female artists from different locations, …

Museum Websites And Restitution: Rediscovering Holocaust-Era Objects In The Digital Age, Gabriella Bloom

MA Theses

Under the Third Reich, Europe experienced one of the most far-reaching examples of plunder of cultural property in modern history. While the Allies succeeded in returning many objects and artworks towards the end of the war and initially following it, many objects remained missing and hidden. The late 1990s led to a resurgence of interest in Holocaust-Era looting, resulting in a rise of cases and litigation over previously plundered objects. As many looted artworks materialized in United States museums, museums began further researching their collections’ provenance and inputting this information online. Today, most major museums have a section of their …

Liminality As Battle-Line, Hejun Xu, Jingmei Yu

Curating Contemporary Art: Documents & Writings

Sotheby’s Institute of Art is pleased to present Liminality As Battle-Line, a group exhibition curated by Hejun Xu and Jingmei Yu, two MA Art Business candidates in class of 2018. The exhibition will be on view at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York from October 31st through November 6th. The exhibition is part of a series of projects curated by students of Sotheby’s Institute of Art enrolled in Curating Contemporary Art.

Enter The Universe, Matthew Blong

Curating Contemporary Art: Documents & Writings

Sotheby’s Institute of Art is pleased to present Enter the Universe, a monographic exhibition of recent work by New York City-based visual artist and poet Maria Dimanshtein, curated by Matthew Blong, candidate, Master of Arts in Contemporary Art, class of 2019.

Walter Gropius, Mies Van Der Rohe And Marcel Breuer: Designing For America, Shiri Chapman-Daniel

MA Projects

Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer: Designing for America examines interior and furniture projects by the three European modern designer after emigrating to the U.S. in 1938. Many of these projects are not very well known, or are commonly discussed solely in terms of architecture, yet the interiors in fact reveal interesting and significant developments in Gropius, Mies and Breuer's work. The exhibition highlights the evolution of their designs, as well as the extent to which they were affected by American tendencies and innovations and their lasting impact.

Business Plan Project, Hejun Xu

MA Projects

The business plan is to build an online trade platform dedicated only to selling ceramic art and design in China, our mission is to provide high quality and modern design of ceramic art to middle - and upper - middle class of the country, and is to also reinvigorate the country’s tradition and culture of aesthetic object appreciating

Chuck Close: The Cost Of Behaving Badly, And #Metoo, Rebecca Cohen-Homapour

MA Theses

In July of 2016, artist, Chuck Close was interviewed with a front cover spread in New York Times Magazine to discuss his legendary career. In December of 2017, Close was accused of sexually mistreating women on numerous occasions. This dissertation considers the powerful artist Chuck Close and repercussions following recent accusations against him made by multiple women. It will help us begin to understand how the recent allegations affect art museums and public exhibitions. There is also a discussion analyzing if an artists’ work can be separated from the reputation of its author. A hedonic regression, data analysis and interviews …

Moral Rights: The Economic Ramifications Of Moral Rights Under Vara In The U.S., Akilah Chandler

MA Theses

When balancing the interests of the art market gatekeepers including patrons, dealers, and auction house intermediaries, with the interest of artists, artists have always bared the shorter end of the stick. It has been almost 30 years since the U.S. legal system acknowledged moral rights and a lifetime that artist have had to defend those rights. However, the question remains— how has the art market balanced these conflicting interests and at what expense? This paper will explore the effects moral rights have on an artist’s market and with that, the overall art market. This paper will also cover the ramifications …

The Rococo Revival In Contemporary Porcelain, Ariel Senackerib

MA Theses

The contemporary design market has seen a resurgence of the rococo style. Porcelain has become a popular medium, and artists and designers have been revisiting the possibilities of it by returning to the motifs and symbols of the mid eighteenthcentury. While there is a wealth of existing literature on porcelain manufactories, including Meissen, Sèvres and others, the rococo style is often overlooked in literature for its cultural and theoretical value. The rococo has been given little consideration by art historians, because of its excessive luxury and cultural appropriation. However, many contemporary artists and designers have found new inspiration in the …

Protest Of Controversial Art In New York City Museums In 2017-2018: Reactions, Responses, And Legal/Ethical Obligations Of Museums In The Age Of #Metoo, #Blacklivesmatter, And Activism On The Internet., Isabel Telonis

MA Theses

Over the last two years, museums in New York City have experienced a rise in protest and backlash against the display of works of art, particularly those that are perceived as offensive, controversial, and relevant to current sociopolitical issues.

This thesis explores three case studies of controversy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, all of which faced protest and public criticism over particular works of art and responded in a unique way to their respective scandal. This study is comprised of an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion. …

The "Whys" Of The Grand Cameo: A Holistic Approach To Understanding The Piece, Its Origins And Its Context, Constantine Prince Sidamon-Eristoff

MA Theses

The Grand Cameo for France is the largest cameo surviving from antiquity. Scholars have debated who is portrayed on the stone and what its scene means for centuries, often, although not always, limiting their interpretations to this narrow area and typically only discussing other causes in passing. This pattern can and should be broken, allowing the stone to be what all objects truly are: windows to the lives that that objects have lived, just as all physical things are; evidence of an experience part of the world went though, whose meanings have and continue to be part of a wider …

Current Issues In The Conservation Of Contemporary Art And Its Non-Traditional Materials, Sandra Hong

MA Theses

The history of art has shown that artists of the present will always find a way to push boundaries and create unprecedented work, whether through the use of foreign materials, new technical processes, or in concept. However exciting this may be, this innovation in the twenty-first century has brought with it an entire world of new challenges for today’s conservators—the specialists tasked with the seemingly impossible duty of preserving art that, by its very nature, refuses to endure. This thesis is an examination of the unique conservation challenges in contemporary art that have been introduced as a result of an …

The Glass Ceiling: Female Artists' Gallery Representation In The New Millennium And A History Of Imbalance, Caroline Currier

MA Theses

The concept of the “glass ceiling” means that an acknowledged barrier to advancement in a profession exists. This paper discusses the state of gender inequality in contemporary New York galleries today, and how they have changed over the past 10 years as well as contextually, throughout history. Often, gender inequality in the art world is made visible by the lacking number of female artist museum shows or through comparing auction prices. Statistics regarding gallery representation is less common, in part due to the fact that artist representation is a fluid process and it is difficult to track these figures over …

French Wallpaper Decors: Papiers Peints In Homes Of The American South, Christine Speare

MA Theses

French wood-block printed wallpaper is a very unique mural art form, yet often neglected. With this historical lack of attention, few academics have devoted themselves to the study of the topic, especially in the United States; and yet, wallpaper can reveal so much about past styles, settings, and collectors. Due to the historical changes in fashion, natural aging, weather, war, and neglect, a considerably limited number of collections continue to hang in situ in the American South in relation to the abundant examples found in the Northeast that have been better documented. Yet, the South’s historic affinity for all that …

How Do You Depict The Life Of A Soul?: Word And Text In And As Image In Soviet Nonconformist Art, Matthew Blong

MA Theses

Visual artworks by Soviet nonconformist artists, especially those associated with the Moscow Conceptualist and Sots-Art movements of the mid-1960s to mid-1980s, prominently feature experimentations with word and text—both in and as image—for a wide variety of reasons that have been studied by scholars of Soviet and Russian art.

In this paper, a formal and conceptual analysis of nearly thirty text-and-image artworks by nonconformist artists of the period traces the motivations and inspirations for this highly creative and generative practice. Beginning with the desire to resume where the historic Russian avant-garde had left off, these artworks challenge notions of language as …

Untitled Art Fair Radio Panel Discussion, Dongyoon Park

MA Projects

Sotheby’s Institute MAAB students Dong Yoon Park and Nuria Richards are honored to announce the participation of a great group of speakers for a conversation about current issues in the arts, especially the impact of the global economy and social events on art production, institutions, and collections.

The Capitalist-Marxist Dichotomy Within The Hudson River School: Conceptualizing American Property Through The Career Of Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910), Astrid Tvetenstrand

MA Theses

The Hudson River School artistic movement has been regarded as one of the foremost examples of American painting. These images of landscape have embodied the spirit of the United States and its perpetually changing relationship with nature. While these nineteenth-century paintings are consistently analyzed through the lenses of Romanticism and Idealism, there is a lacuna in the narrative which accentuates economic and political philosophies as important influencers of these works. The impact of capitalism and Marxism is identifiable through not only the country’s economic system, but also the nation’s artistic movements. These theories are well-defined by paintings highlighting northeastern agrarianism …

Love Rings: From Ancient Egypt To The 19th Century, Solah Hwang

MA Projects

This curatorial proposal accounts for an exhibition on the history of love rings from the ancient Egyptian period to the 19th century. It began with the belief that the void space in circlet objects carries more than what it seems; despite the small size, its symbolic power is evidently weighty. This proposal was compiled with hope to interest people in antique rings for not only their exterior value but also for their historical significance that the rings survived to carry through the course of histories.

Transformations, Brian Metzger

Curating Contemporary Art: Documents & Writings

Sotheby's Institute of Art is pleased to present TRANSFORMATIONS, a group exhibition curated by Brian Metzger, Master of Art Business candidate class of 2016. The exhibit is on view from November 29 to December 5, 2016.

Have Traditional Auction Houses Been Affected By Online Ones?: The Case Of Phillips And Paddle8, Heejae Chung

MA Projects

There is always a strong demand for high quality art and collectibles. With the analysis of the case study and the interviews with experts from different auction houses, this paper will show whether the traditional auction markets have been affected by online ones.

Phillips is taking a strong hold over the middle market. In particular, Phillips’ Contemporary art department is known for focusing on younger artists, which represents lower prices than other areas. To compare in a fair way in terms of price and genre of artworks, Phillips’ Contemporary Art Day Sales in New York from 2006 to 2016 will …

How Did We Get Here? Artist Relatives In Provincetown, Massachusetts, Camille Cardinal

MA Projects

How Did We Get Here? Artist Relatives in Provincetown, Massachusetts explores the practices of eight families of artists across two or three generations who have lived and worked in Provincetown, a town on the very tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Provincetown is one of the oldest and most significant art colonies, dating back to the early 20th century.

The Space Of Art In The Digital Age, Ellie Isaacs

MA Projects

This journal article looks at the space of art in the digital age in order to establish whether virtual art practices will eventually render the physicality of art as obsolete. The article draws focus on the construction of virtual spaces to investigate the possibility of a consequential collapse in real space. Two key aspects that I have concentrated on are the social experience of these modes of artistic practice and the inversion of public and private spheres.