The Future of the Art World: 38 Dialogues

A wide-ranging collection of interviews conducted by New York Timescontributor András Szántó sheds light on the future of the art world in a rapidly changing society

This is the third in a series of books investigating the future of the museum, following on The Future of the Museum: 28 Dialogues (2020) and Imagining the Future of the Museum: 21 Dialogues with Architects (2022). If the previous volumes examined the "software" and the "hardware" of the museum, respectively, the third installment of the trilogy surveys the social, cultural, economic, institutional and technological conditions in which museums operate. The conversations engage voices not heard in the prior volumes: artists, curators, collectors, members of the art trade, social scientists, entrepreneurs and others. The dialogues range across a panorama of topics, from the future of the art gallery and outlooks for the art fair, to the role of globalization in the art world, to the internal and external forces transforming cultural institutions, to the impacts of climate change, to perspectives on the future of digital creativity and artificial intelligence. Several conversations shed light on the evolution of specific global regions--from Asia to Africa to Latin America to the Gulf nations and the Middle East--where some of the most transformative investments in arts infrastructure are currently being made. The dialogues grapple with the question of whether the art world can adjust to the future incrementally, or whether it is heading into a period of systemic, paradigmatic transformation. Taken together, the conversations offer a portrait of an art world seeking to adapt to a society undergoing an accelerated period of change.