The Impact of Cultural Globalization on International Contemporary Art Fairs (ICAFs)

Even though globalization used to be associated with various domains and not that much with arts, there is a growing number of research activities which allowed new concepts of cultural globalization to arise. As the world has been experiencing increasing interconnectedness between countries, it even more boosted the international trade volumes. In fields such as science and trade, it led to the creation of standards which are useful for facilitating a seamless transmission of data, knowledge, industrial parts and goods. However, taking another point of view, standards can also be perceived as a loss of uniqueness and diversity. These represent two sides of the same coin and they happen to be particularly interesting when they are applied to high arts. Culture in general is celebrated for its heterogeneity, thus any sign of emerging pattern in both production and consumption would be a sign of deterioration. Nevertheless, with an uprising popularity of platforms like international contemporary art fairs or biennials, it seems right to question the quality of artworks offered at these fairs in terms of their diversity. Therefore, despite the previous note about art and finance being two different worlds, art fairs in fact resemble physical places where commerce and art meet so they face the same challenge with regard to formation of standards. The research aims to reveal to what extent is art at international art fairs around the world reflecting the diversity of cultures. Such a question implies a qualitative method yet the thesis includes also quantitative approach to overcome drawbacks associated with each method when they are used exclusively. The use of content analysis of 12 international contemporary art fairs (ICAFs) together with email interviews conducted with art galleries’ directors was further enriched by employing multidimensional framework as a tool for researching cultural diversity. Such a combination of methods allowed to draw complex conclusions and to enhance validity of the research. As followed from the data analysis, the process of standardization is not affecting the diversity of ICAFs significantly even though they are becoming more alike from the organizational point of view.