How Can Curators in Today's Art World Help Emerging Chinese Artists to Increase the Commercial Value of Their Artworks?

Abstract

The changing landscape of the art world drives consumer preferences, and emerging trends in art and technology. While the art world is constantly evolving, there are many emerging artists, but very few of them have made it to the top. One of the challenges that hinder the emerging artist community is finding buyers for their artworks and connecting with galleries, fairs and exhibitions to increase their commercial value of the artworks. Although the Asian market has grown and gained real recognition compared to previous decades, it is surprising that China’s emerging artists are still struggling to sell their works in the industry. In this study, I aim to explore how curators play a role in dealing with these challenges. The research question is: how can curators help China’s emerging artists create commercial value of their artworks in today's art world? This research finds, it has been found that curators can use brand ecology theory to help emerging artists solve this dilemma, providing them with services throughout their career development lifecycle, including curators play an important role in connecting artists with consumers, and branding artists and their works, by diverse methods.They include publishing the artist's creative process and artworks on different social media, designing compelling stories, helping emerging artists analyze art market trends and consumer behavior, collaborating with commercial galleries to incubate emerging artists, participating in art space exhibitions, collaborating with famous brands to launch co-branded products, and designing and selling peripheral merchandise of the artwork.