Does the Art World Really Need Another Market Education Program?
After a 15-year tenure as Art Basel’s global director, art industry veteran Marc Spiegler has a new goal: educating the next wave of art professionals. Teaming up with Art Market Minds, the group behind the annual Art Business Conference, Spiegler will launch a new online learning platform, The Academy, with a 10-hour course in February. Catchily titled “Understanding Today’s Art World, with Marc Spiegler,” it promises participants a whistle-stop tour through the intricate gears of the contemporary art market. Priced at a relatively modest £750, the program will be served up in four 2.5-hour live online sessions—perfect for the ambitious and time-strapped.
This isn’t Spiegler’s first foray into academia. A veteran lecturer at Milan’s Bocconi University, he brings a journalist’s curiosity and a market insider’s savvy to his pedagogy. “Teaching is a longstanding passion for me, and I have been closely following the evolution of the art world for decades, first as a journalist and then as market protagonist,” Spiegler told Observer. “I am excited to launch this new education platform with Louise Hamlin and her team. We aim to offer a unique opportunity for anyone looking to enter the sector, giving them rapid access to the knowledge necessary to navigate the contemporary art world.”
The course promises to reveal the main forces shaping the art market today, from digitalization to the inexorable generational wealth transfer and the relentless pull of social media. “Students will walk away with a clear-eyed view of how all the different players fit together now and how those roles might shift moving forward,” Spiegler said, hinting at a no-nonsense, practical approach.
Spiegler’s course will be followed by the Cultural Catalyst Program, a 10-week marathon of workshops designed to help learners transform ideas into polished pitches. “For the students, it will be quite intense,” Spiegler said. “They’ll get coaching from me and the Art Nova finance team, but in the end, they will face a panel of seasoned investors.” While the pressure will be on, he added that his Bocconi students always love this type of project.
But does the art world really need another art market-focused learning platform? When we posed the question, Hamlin, head of Art Market Minds, was ready with an answer. “We built this to be a fast, practical deep dive into today’s art world,” she said, positioning the program as a crash course for the particularly ambitious. “We think it’s good value for what it is—10 hours of live instruction from a seasoned professor who held a major role for 15 years and operated at a global scale.”
The hope, she added, is that the course will equip brilliant minds from around the world with a rock-solid foundation in the art market’s inner workings, enabling them to bring fresh ideas to the table in any industry role.
Art business programs are booming
The art market’s increasing professionalization and financialization have fueled a boom in BA, MA, MSc and business school programs, as well as short courses, all tailored to the managerial, financial and marketing aspects of the industry. Once dominated by art history programs, visual arts programs and the occasional course on curatorial studies, today’s art academies and university modules now feature sprawling curricula that include arts administration, cultural heritage management and the intricacies of the market itself.
Often branded as “art administration” or “arts management” programs, many focus on the operational mechanics of arts organizations, ranging from nonprofit institutions—think theaters, museums and opera houses—to for-profit ventures like galleries and auction houses. According to a 2017 study by the Association of Arts Administration Educators, the U.S. alone boasted 88 postgraduate programs in arts administration, with an additional 77 internationally, including 30 in the U.K. Since then, these numbers have ballooned, with new offerings sprouting in Asia, South America and Africa. The University of Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa, for example, now offers art administration classes, proving that this trend is global.
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Auction house heavyweights Sotheby’s and Christie’s are also in the education game. Sotheby’s Institute, founded in 1969 as a training ground for auction house staff, and Christie’s Education, launched in 1978, have evolved into major players offering both short courses and master’s degrees in collaboration with universities in London, New York and more recently, Hong Kong. While Christie’s shut down its MA program in 2019, Sotheby’s Institute continues to churn out graduates eager to break into the international art market. Their courses remain steeped in trade-specific skills, though both have experimented with art-history-focused options to shore up their academic credibility.
These programs aren’t cheap. Tuition for graduate degrees hovers between £30,000-£40,000 in the U.K. and climbs to at least $60,000 in the U.S. Short courses, meanwhile, come with price tags in the thousands, depending on their length. While students can build impressive international networks and secure entry into the field, the steep financial outlay doesn’t always guarantee a quick return on investment. Early-career salaries in the art world are notoriously modest, and moving up the ranks can be a slow grind.
As the art market continues its rapid expansion, creating platforms to standardize knowledge and business practices seems vital. But questions linger: Can such a niche industry, rife with entry barriers, absorb the flood of graduates pouring out of these programs? And perhaps more critically, will local art scenes be able to integrate this growing talent pool, or will the most ambitious graduates inevitably cluster in established global hubs, leaving regional markets underserved?
The rise of art business studies began as a pragmatic solution to the industry’s need for specialists equipped with the skills to navigate its unique challenges. Yet, what started as a necessary response now teeters on the edge of becoming a self-serving enterprise. With programs proliferating at breakneck speed, critics argue that many prioritize applicant numbers over the ultimate success of their graduates in the field, transforming education into yet another profit-driven industry.
Adding fuel to the debate is the growing body of literature that treats art as a financial asset class. Often obsessed with prices, economic data, and attempts to shoehorn art into traditional asset models, this approach draws sharp criticism for sidelining the cultural and historical dimensions intrinsic to the value of art. The art market operates under rules distinct from other sectors, driven by layers of symbolic, social, and cultural significance. Stripping away these nuances in favor of a purely financial perspective not only oversimplifies the market but risks producing professionals ill-equipped to engage meaningfully with the complexities of the trade.