Making the Contemporary Art Market More Inclusive

Abstract While there is extensive scholarship about how the art world devises, secures, and furthers, to use Pierre Bourdieu’s term, “distinction,” in this article I connect the Bourdieuian notion of taste to the luxury act of collecting art in the twenty-first century. I contend that collecting art is a luxury experience that bifurcates class and racial divides. The very act of collecting is a cultural mechanism that furthers socio-economic division through a form of cultural gatekeeping that restricts access to the privileged few. This article initially looks at a group of mostly white collectors, individuals who come to the art world with privilege and capital that fosters possibilities and access, and then considers a group of Black collectors, individuals who may have the financial assets to purchase art yet do so to further a sense of pride, respect, joy, and what Christina Sharpe describes as a form of “wake work” within the Black community. Even though art collecting is an elitist activity predicated on financial resources and in-network expertise, a cohort of Black art collectors has attempted to break down the barriers around access that have delimited the art world. I assess these efforts to challenge exclusivity. I argue that a great deal of the cultural work that segregates race and class, through the machinations of collecting, occurs because of specific attitudes that keep resources within privileged realms as a result of restrictive practices, actions that define luxury consumption.