Art world


An art world is comprised of all the people involved in the production, commission, preservation, promotion, criticism, and sale of art. Howard S. Becker coined the term, and describes it as "the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that art world is noted for." (Becker, 1982). In Europe and the Western Hemisphere, most purveyors of contemporary art - artists, art galleries, art educators, critics and museum personnel - refer to the market and social forces that bind them as the "Art World".