The Role of Freeports in the Global Art Market
The Role of Freeports in the Global Art Market Photo by Panoramic images, via Getty Images. In “Art and the Global Economy,” University of San Francisco professor John Zarobell examines “how the art world has blossomed into a global economy in the past generation, and what that means to artists, dealers, curators, cultural administrators, educators, and the public.” Zarobell, an artist and former curator, calls for a deeper questioning into the tendency to measure and justify culture as an economic force, looks at how museums, biennials and fairs are evolving, and asks what the current vogue for “cognitive capitalism” means for the arts and artists themselves. Zarobell also explores less-public aspects of the global art market, what he calls “the art market in the margins.” In the following excerpt, he takes us on a tour of the freeport, and relates it to other frontier elements of the global economy. Art is one of the most unregulated industries on the planet. Auction houses provide
