Art and labour, museum institutions, and the art market. Socio-economic challenges in the context of the cultural and creative industries

Abstract

In the context of the contemporary paradigm of the cultural and creative industries, the museum institution loses its traditional predominance as a place for legitimizing and making artistic activity visible and has to share spaces of power with other mediating agents. We distinguish two fundamental factors that have led to this evolution; on the one hand, a sharp and constant growth in the number of artists and, on the other, a radical change in society’s perception of art. As favorable as it may seem, this situation nevertheless presents complex challenges, in terms of sustainability and integration capabilities, which the two models confronted in this article have to face. Under these premises, we based our research on several studies that addressed these issues by focusing on the context of art in the Spanish State. Besides analyzing the existing similarities and differences between the two models, we propose some recommendations focused on the desired improvement of the socio-economic conditions of the artists’ collective and greater use of their work, in terms of productivity, through the optimization of interactivity between artists and the public.