Let us be clear: we are convinced that digital will revolutionize the art world. We are convinced that this change is happening now already and it will only become more obvious over the next years. This shift is influencing the business models along which the art industry has been working since decades and it will inevitability transfer powers between the actors in the play. Some might disappear, others will gain power, new ones will come forward; after all the art industry is a business driven by supply, demand and value creation with people making decisions and trying to optimize their portfolios. New rules create new opportunities.
So where will this digital revolution – with the availability of broadband internet, the increased penetration of mobile internet and tablets, the popularization of social media like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and LinkedIn – take the art business? We don’t want to pretend we know the answer to such vast question, but probably it will take us much further than we can think of now. Allow us to answer instead with a famous quote by Bill Gates: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten”.
A long introduction to finally come to the topic we want to discuss : is the Art Amsterdam Online experiment on Open Art Collection a step in this new direction?
Art Amsterdam Medialab 