Abstract
This chapter examines the occupation of gallerists from a Bourdieusian perspective, open to some interactionist suggestions. It is a qualitative research based on in-depth interviews with Milanese art dealers and participant observations during openings and art fairs. The subfield of gallery owners is a case of economy of symbolic goods, characterised by a double loyalty to both artistic and economic values. This ambivalence takes shape in the moral claim of the gallerist’s label in opposition to the idea of art dealer. It acts within practices and discourses and it structures internal divisions. The analysis allows to understand some clashes of classification and hierarchies in this occupational community.
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Notes
- 1.
Milano has the highest rate of private activities, i.e. art galleries and auction houses, whilst it is less significant at public level, as it lacks important museums of contemporary art.
- 2.
The interviewees were men and women aged between 31 and 74. These data were also collected through participating in three editions of the Milan fair Miart, one edition of the Fair of Verona and one of Bologna. I attended these fairs both as an external observer and as a collaborator for a gallery of Milan. During the observations and the interviews, conducted over several years (2010–2012), I took on various roles: from that of simple external observer to active collaborator, first for an art critic and then for a gallery. In addition, catalogues and specialised journals were also consulted and the classifications drawn up by art experts, and the data offered by the national association of modern and contemporary art gallery owners were taken into consideration.
- 3.
The empirical research was developed during the 2010–2012 period. The complete results are not yet published, but a first reference of the research output is Uboldi (2017).
- 4.
The authors explain how the concept of occupational community is a heuristic tool “to know what dentistry, firefighting, accounting, or photography consists of and means to those who pursue it is to know the cognitive, social and moral contours of the occupation” (Van Maanen and Barley 1984, 295).
- 5.
According to an extended meaning of dilemma of status but recognised by Hughes himself, who, for example, observes how, in the role of the personnel officer, there is “an essential contradiction between the various functions which are united in one position. The personnel man is expected to communicate the mind of the workers to management and then to interpret management to the workers”(Hughes 1984, 147).
- 6.
Van Maanen and Barley stress that: “by occupational community we mean a group of people who consider themselves to be engaged in the same sort of work; who identify (more or less positively) with their work; who share with one another a set of values, norms, and perspectives that apply to, but extend beyond, their work related matters; and whose social relationships meld the realms of work and leisure” (Van Maanen and Barley 1984, 299).
- 7.
The “integrated professional artist” identifies a relationship of full adhesion to the world of art, its social networks and its norms. The “maverick artist” expresses a relationship of opposition to some standard canons, matured in the same art world. The “folk artist” produces art works as the result of daily activities carried out for practical ends and as the expression of belonging to a social world that is different and extraneous from the artistic one. Lastly, the activity of the “naive artist” is the expression of a personal need, indifferent and without any type of relation, formative and social, with the art world (Becker 1982).
- 8.
Participation in fairs takes place through a process of selection by the organising committee. Paraphrasing some reflections developed by Sapiro (2016) on the literary field, the art fairs play a key role in the dynamics of consecration in the field of art.
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Uboldi, A. (2020). Hierarchies and Divisions in the Subfield of Gallery Owners: A Research on Art Galleries in Milan. In: Glauser, A., Holder, P., Mazzurana, T., Moeschler, O., Rolle, V., Schultheis, F. (eds) The Sociology of Arts and Markets. Sociology of the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39013-6_10
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