Why “Fine Arts” Can No Longer Be Culturally Relevant

[Dyske Suematsu]

In our lives, we earn and accumulate different forms of wealth or “capital”. We think of “wealth” as mostly consisting of money, or “financial capital, but other forms are just as valuable. And, it is possible to exchange one form with another. There are many industries that serve as exchanges. The primary function of fine arts is to exchange financial capital with cultural capital. Those who have excess financial capital and little to no cultural capital (like Wall Street bankers) need a way to exchange some of their financial capital with cultural capital. Fine arts is a perfect medium for this exchange because the quantity of each artwork is fixed (usually just one) and they resist counterfeiting, like gold as a medium of exchange. Galleries handle the exchange at the individual level whereas museums handle it at the corporate level...

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http://dyske.com/paper/1082