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Throughout history, the glass medium had typically been considered a medium of craft rather than a fine art. This was due to the medium being used for functional purposes, such as vases, drinking cups, pitchers, and other vessels. Craft can be defined as handmade objects of clay, fiber, glass, metal, or wood; thus, the assumption that all glass work is craft is valid. However, in more recent years, glass has been crossing over into the contemporary art market due to the high content-driven works and diverse uses of the glass medium. Challenging the way glass is being considered an artistic medium is being done by many glass artists and artists working with glass, including Dale Chihuly, Toots Zynsky, Beth Lipman, and Josiah McElheny. This paper discusses the various ways in which these artists are making the transition from craft to contemporary art. Chapter 1 discusses the studio glass movement, the Pilchuck Glass School, the first-generation glass artists, and the second-generation artists working with glass. The glass pieces made by these artists are essential to recognize because the diversity of their work shows the various ways the glass medium has been interpreted. Chapter 2 explains the artworld presence of the artists and their glass artworks, including gallery representation, exhibitions, and studio practice. Understanding how the art experts classify the artists and represent them, along with how these artists are exhibited, demonstrates how glass artists have started to cross over into contemporary art. Chapter 3 analyzes the contemporary glass market, comparing glass sculptures and installations to ceramic works of art, viewing how databases are classifying the glass artworks, and receiving direct information from the gallery representatives on the artists' markets.

In the late 19th and 20th centuries Indian paintings were considered provincial and were seen to mimic Western innovations. Western art institutions largely consolidated them into one category with other kinds of Southeast Asian art. But after 1989, with the opening of the global market, major players in the Western art world saw an opportunity. In 1995 Sotheby's held its first Indian art auction for the Herwitz collection. Saffronart was founded in 2000 with exclusive focus on modern Indian art. In 2003 Sotheby's and Christie's started to hold modern Indian art auctions. The distinction of "Modern Indian Art" as a category was created by external groups. The Western art industry created a validating language for 20th century Indian art on the global market. It led to an increased demand for Indian modernists in the West. Although the number of local Indian collectors has been increasing due to the rising number of high-net-worth Indians, their number is still not significant in comparison to the new wealth of the country. In contrast to other new markets like China, growth in India's art market has not been nearly as significant.How can a country like India cultivate its own aesthetic scholarship and collector base within its own borders in the long run and become part of the global art market scene? The objective of this paper is to find some answers to this question by researching the public art education from K-12 grades and the higher art education of the country and compare them with other countries from the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China), and especially with China which has proved to be particularly successful in cultivating its own art market infrastructure.The thesis first introduces the major art market developments of India in the last hundred years. Then it dives into the country's art education, beginning with the colonial art education and continuing through the contemporary art education scene.The final chapter introduces notable privately funded art initiatives whose work fills the gap that the government has left on India's art education. These initiatives go against and challenge the post-colonial state of art education with their decades-long rote learning practices, and aim try to provoke more critical, interdisciplinary art practices while expanding their networks locally and internationally.This thesis proposes that the marginalized role of art education in India is a major underlying cause of the country's failure to cultivate larger interest in visual arts and art collecting. My research attempts to collect data on India's art education policies and compare those with the more rigorous and enforced art education policies of China. My expectations of the outcome are more associative than clear-cut data science, as each country has many particular variables and India has very little policy in regard to art education. The discussion concludes with ideas on how to create awareness on the importance of art on the policy level, and how homegrown aesthetic value construction can be possible with the collaboration of museums, schools and initiatives, along with the help of technology, which can ultimately give a sense of importance to the local public.

Some artists achieve substantial fame only after their death. Such fame is brought about through the efforts of a network of curators, critics, and estate managers who collectively shape a story from the life and work of the artist into a cohesive mythology and, in so doing, create or expand the market and value for the artist's work. Photographers are a unique subset of the posthumously famous artist. Unlike painting or sculpture, most photography is produced not for artistic purposes but to document people, events, places, or objects. When everyone is a photographer, what separates an artist from an amateur becomes a matter of marketing. This thesis explores the posthumous discovery of three of photography's key figures: Eugène Atget, Francesca Woodman, and Vivian Maier. It examines the stories of their discoveries and investigates significant aspects of creating an artist myth from a deceased artist's identity: control over the artist's estate, institutional support, and critical writing. Taking a broad look at the problems the photographic medium has historically faced in its acceptance as a fine art, this research demonstrates the necessity of establishing a photographer's mythology in order to further the market for their works.

The legitimacy of an artist's identity requires the empowerment of social recognition, which is achieved through the capital transaction and transformation within the two empowerment paths within the artworld: non-market empowerment path (autonomous) and market empowerment path (heteronomous). Because the original narrative of Chinese contemporary art was the ideology from "The Occident" countries, the non-market empowerment path in China lacks empowerment for contemporary Chinese artists, as the empowerment of it is a top-down, one-way empowerment process reflecting the will of the authorities. As a complement of the non-market empowerment path, the market empowerment path provides a valuable empowerment path and development space for Chinese contemporary artists as its empowerment is multi-directional and mutual. However, the market empowerment path also has the practical problem of relying too much on the Western art market for empowerment. In this case, galleries, the only empowering entities in the Chinese art market that directly establish business relationships with artists, are actively seeking ways to change this situation through innovation in business models. Among them, the Hive Center for Contemporary Art in the 798 Art District is a good example. Transforming from a non-profit private art museum, the Hive Center insists on investing in and supporting Chinese emerging contemporary artists and combines academic (autonomous) ways and market-oriented (heteronomous) ways to empower artists.

This research focuses on tokenism of female artists in the twenty-first century. Drawing on the collaborative study by In Other Words and Artnet News that reported women's place in the art world, this thesis will further investigate the exhibitions and acquisitions history of non-profit institutes in the U.S. and explore the auction records and gallery representations in the past two decades. The aim of this study was to determine that in addition to the recognized inequality between gender, female artists also suffer from the influence of tokenism, which, according to the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, refers to the practice or policy of admitting an extremely small number of members from racial, ethnic, or gender groups to work or to be involved in educational or social activities to give the impression of inclusivity, while, in actuality, these groups are excluded from the mainstream. Data from different institutions, including museums, galleries, foundations, etc., prove that tokenism of female artists exists. Particularly focus on the phenomenon in the U.S., this thesis will also discuss tokenism as a global trend and explore possible methods to address this problem as well as the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on it.

This paper explores the development of art market information and art market analysis since the 1960s. Unlike the stock or bond markets, primary market data is not publicly available in the art market. Due to the lack of primary market information, secondary market data, auction sales records, are often used to analyze the art market trends and to explore the suitability of art as an investment. Using the accumulated auction data, influential scholars such as William J. Baumol, William C. Goetzmann, Jianping Mei, and Michael Moses have analyzed the art market and created market indices to understand the financial motives behind art consumption. This paper starts by investigating the history of art market information. The first chapter charts the history of art indices through four representative studies from the 1960s to the 1990s. The second chapter examines influential researches conducted in the 2000s and 2010s. After going over the development of art market analysis in chronological order, the paper ends with a brief exploration of how the prior studies could influence the future of art market analysis.

This thesis focuses on the Papunya Tula art movement that emerged from the Western Desert of Australia in 1971 and its lasting effects on the Aboriginal art market. The movement is credited with changing the discourse around Australian art history, introducing Aboriginal art to the sphere of Australian contemporary art, and creating a viable and sustainable market for Aboriginal art. This thesis includes an art historical analysis of the work by the founding members of the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative, along with the history of the origin of the movement and the role that art teacher Geoffrey Bardon played in its inception. In chapter two I will begin the discussion on British colonization of Australia, beginning with its history and effects on Aboriginal society, and later addressing how colonialism as a structure connects to primitivism seen in museums and galleries. Chapter two will also analyze the policies implemented by the Australian government, which put further limitations on Aboriginal self- determination within the contemporary art sector. To conclude this thesis, I am going to present an analysis of the background and current market for Aboriginal art, and how colonialism has subconsciously shaped the Australian contemporary art market.

This thesis scrutinizes the rediscovery of the Chinese artist Sanyu (or Chang Yu, 常玉, 1895-1966) by examining major factors that have prompted the radical increase in value of Sanyu's market from the late 1980s to the present. In 2019 and 2020, six paintings by Sanyu fetched over USD 20 million in auction sales. While the news media renewed its interest in Sanyu's market, its development remains poorly understood from an academic perspective. To investigate Sanyu's rediscovery comprehensively, this study incorporates bibliographic research, data analysis, and interviews. Chapter 1 explores Sanyu's biography, particularly in terms of the post-May-Fourth zeitgeist and his characteristics as a dandy. While the historical background and Sanyu's personal history were inextricably linked to the recontextualization of Sanyu, Charles Baudelaire and Michel Foucault's theories on dandyism and modernity shed light on Sanyu's role as a Chinese modernist. Chapter 2 traces the early stages of Sanyu's rediscovery in Taiwan from the 1980s to 2001. It takes into account of Taiwan's art market boom in the 1990s and illustrates efforts by Taiwanese art critics, art dealers, auctioneers, and curators to reconstitute Sanyu's stature. The progression suggests that Sanyu's market is far from an overnight success. Chapter 3 demonstrates multiple driving forces for the significant growth of Sanyu's market between 2002 and 2020. Along with the purchasing power from mainland Chinese collectors, other influential factors include Hong Kong's transformation as Asia's art hub, the publication of Sanyu Catalogue Raisonné, exhibitions in Paris, Barcelona, Taipei, Hong Kong, and mainland China that featured Sanyu's works and the consistent participation of Taiwanese collectors.

This thesis will serve to introduce the topic of independent artists who are creating and maintaining a market for their work through a social media-facilitated patronage system into academic dialogue surrounding the art market. The first section of this paper will outline the current state of the art market and the impact of its disproportionate focus on top-tier artists before outlining the historical development of the art market and examples of artists who have unconventionally navigated the art marketplace. The later sections of this thesis will include three case studies focused on independent artists with self-sustaining markets for their work through the utilization of social media platforms. Research was collected for these case studies through interviews with artists with marketplaces for their artwork on social media. This paper will describe the interview process, its responses and analyze common trends within them. Moreover, identifying the implications and limitations of this research.