In this digital age, declarations surface of the death of the expert and the democratization of information. Crowd wisdom is seen as the new guide in constructing and evaluating knowledge. In the context of the art world, this tension between the amateurs and the experts becomes particularly pronounced as popular meets high culture. Questions arise such as: what is the role of the expert in the evaluation of art in contemporary times? Do social media dismantle age-old hierarchies and established priesthoods in the art world? And can we assume that mass participation in valuation results in better judgments? This article addresses such popular notions of participation and expertise concerning social media in the art world through a historical lens by re-examining and positioning art experts from past to present. Particularly, characteristics of intermediaries in the art market are examined closely regarding their strategies in knowledge production and the establishment of expertise. This historical situatedness enables us to move beyond the hype of new media expectations, generating more appropriate avenues of investigation to better grasp possible changes amongst actors within the contemporary art world. This examination is not just theoretically relevant but practically so, given current pressures on art institutions to embrace and reach out to new audiences online.
This article deals with the process of canon formation for Flemish and Dutch painters from the 17th century onwards. We examine how the essential art-historical treatises and art encyclopedias since Houbraken's Grote Schouburgh der Nederlandsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen ranked and evaluated the leading painters, based on the attention given to them in these volumes. Using standardized z-scores, we map the relative importance the selected artists received in these publications over the 3 centuries. In doing so, we emphasize the path-dependency and the dimension of time in explaining the endurance of certain artists in the long run. From our research it emanates that the canon of Netherlandish painters is much more volatile than previously assumed."When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it.
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