Course 2014-2015 a.y.
20458 - ART MANAGEMENT AND MARKETS
ACME
Course taught in English
Go to class group/s: 31
In the last ten years, the contemporary art world has been transformed from a small, relatively stable system into a complex, semi-industrial sector in which financial, political, economic, urban and social interests move at a pace that was even unthinkable only two decades ago. The interaction of these dynamics produces rapid changes in a system whose roles have been historically defined around a small world of galleries, collectors, dealers, institutions and that has been polarized around few dominant urban scenes (New York, Paris, London and in the last part of 20th century, Berlin). These changes imply a multiplicity of opportunities, the appearance of new landscapes for new professionals, and also a number of dead ends. The process involves entrepreneurial opportunities but also raise deep cultural challenges.
The workshop Arts Management and Markets addresses all these issues opening the major in Arts and Heritage management. This course is fit for highly motivated students willing to acquire a professional and competitive edge in the area of Arts management.
The objective of the workshop is twofold:
- on the one side, to help advanced students to refine their specific profile of arts managers consistently with the international job market needs expressed by galleries, dealers, auction houses, exhibition spaces, collectors and artists.
- on the other side, to develop cultural mediation and cultural entrepreneurship capabilities in the perspective of a professional experience strongly characterized by the motivation and the specific understanding of the field, as by the active and enterpreneurial integration in a fast changing and highly internationalized system.
This imply that the course aims to combine the management and entrepreneurship skills with critical, sociological and historical awareness, focusing on the task of cooperating with artists and art productions systems.
The course is divided into two sections:
- one dedicated to the art system (actors, gatekeepers, auction, prices, professions etc) that integrates an historical perspective, direct contact with people that operates in the field at different levels, the analysis of the main transformation of the field;
- one dedicated to the cultural challenges that are influencing the production and the assessment system in the contemporary art (the analysis addresses curatorial issues, historical and critical, analysis of specific works, of specific artists, biographies of specific curators, history of specific exhibitions).
For non attending
Written exam (1h45m) on all the subjects covered in the textbooks.
For attending
The status of attending student is recognized in the first two calendar exams of 2013-14. Students attending the course are required to demonstrate their skill to analyse specific issues as well as to summarize complex issues using several communication tools, working alone and within groups. The students who attend the course get a final grade formed as follows:
- each student is assigned to one group. Groups work on projects during the whole semester, present their results in the last sessions of class and have until the date of the exam to prepare a 5 pages wrap up document on the project. Projects account for 50% of the total grade and are assessed both by faculty and peers. The outputs that are assessed are the presentation of the plan and the actual project as of week of December 9th.
- Final written exam (1 hour). This is an essay based on the lessons, readings and testimonials. The essay accounts for 50% of the total grade.
To be defined.