About
Artworld Salon is a moderated discussion focused upon the fast-paced transformations currently taking place in the global artworld. It started as an email “conversation” between the three founding members. Once we had amassed 20,000 words worth of material, we decided to take it public, hoping to build a network of perspectives from all over the Globe.
This discussion will cover a wide range of artworld topics, including: the economic shifts roiling its markets; the internationalization and expanding number of its players; the impact of technological developments; and the rapid changes in both the broader perception of the artworld and the artworld’s perception of itself. We’re hoping to create something that mixes panel discussion and open-source think tank.
A few things the site is not: an e-business venture; a source of comprehensive artworld news; a nexus of gossip. We intend to steer clear of who-ate-what-where-with-whom-last-night coverage. Likewise, we’ll skip the name-checking of rising artstars and the parsing of their prices, except where such data serves to illustrate some bigger issue. Finally, we are uninterested in any doctrinaire theoretical appraisals of “the culture business.”
It is, in short, an experiment, testing to see whether the topics that fascinate us have resonance beyond ourselves, and seeking to create a civil space online within which we can stir a lively, rigorous, and reality-based discussion about the artworld’s state of play.
The founding members:
Marc Spiegler long covered the artworld for publications such as The Art Newspaper, ARTnews, Monopol, Artnet.de and New York magazine. In September 2007, he became Director, Strategy and Development, for Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, and went on hiatus from the Artworld Salon.
Ian Charles Stewart, a media entrepreneur and investor based in Beijing, is a council member and trustee of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, a visiting professor and enterprise board member of the University of the Arts, London and co-founder of Wired magazine.
András Szántó, a Budapest-born sociologist and journalist, writes frequently about arts and culture. He is a member of the senior faculty of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York and former director of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, where he currently directs the NEA Arts Journalism Institute.
To contact us: mail@artworldsalon.com
The panelists (partial list):
Heman Chong is an artist and a curator based in Berlin and Singapore. He can be found at www.hemanchong.com and during ungodly hours on Skype.
Julia Cooke is an American journalist living in Mexico City. She writes about art, music and design for such publications as ARTnews, Gatopardo and Travesías.
Power Ekroth is a Stockholm-based independent curator and critic, as well as an editor of SITE magazine. She writes regularly for Artforum.com, Contemporary and Frieze.
Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and art historian, specialising in the art market and sculpture history. He has worked across the artworld’s commercial and academic sectors.
Michael J. Hatch lives in Beijing. He has written or translated for Orientations Magazine, the 2007 Venice Biennale, and the contemporary Chinese art history project U-Turn.
Hammad Nasar is a curator based in London. He co-founded the not-for-profit arts organization Green Cardamom and the South Asian arts-advisory company Asal Partners.
Jonathan T. D. Neil is an art critic and historian. He is a contributing editor for Art Review magazine, a co-founder of Boyd Level, a private curatorial firm, and is the Executive Editor at The Drawing Center in New York. You can find his work at jonathantdneil.com
Lindsay Pollock lives in New York and writes on the arts, especially for Bloomberg News. She authored “The Girl with the Gallery,” (Public Affairs 2006). www.lindsaypollock.com
Lisa Ruyter is an American artist living in Vienna. Her website is www.lisaruyter.com, but the way to keep up to date with her many projects and travels is her Flickr page.
Ossian Ward is Time Out London’s art critic. He has written for many others and edited ArtReview, but can now mainly be found pounding the streets of the East and West Ends.
Edward Winkleman lives in New York and owns Winkleman Gallery in Chelsea. He also writes an eponymous blog on art and politics.
