Samuel P. Fraiberger, Roberta Sinatra, Magnus Resch, Christoph Riedl, Albert-László Barabási
>It offers information on 497,796 exhibitions in 16,002 galleries, 289,677 exhibitions in 7568 museums, and 127,208 auctions in 1239 auction houses, spanning 143 countries and 36 years (1980 to 2016, fig. S1), allowing us to reconstruct the artistic career of 496,354 artists
In areas of human activity where performance is difficult to quantify in an objective fashion, reputation and networks of influence play a key role in determining access to resources and rewards. To understand the role of these factors, we reconstructed the exhibition history of half a million artists, mapping out the coexhibition network that captures the movement of art between institutions. Centrality within this network captured institutional prestige, allowing us to explore the career trajectory of individual artists in terms of access to coveted institutions. Early access to prestigious central institutions offered life-long access to high-prestige venues and reduced dropout rate. By contrast, starting at the network periphery resulted in a high dropout rate, limiting access to central institutions. A Markov model predicts the career trajectory of individual artists and documents the strong path and history dependence of valuation in art.
The number of exhibitions for an artist followed a fat-tailed distribution; whereas 52% of the artists had one recorded show, a few high profile artists were exhibited at an exceptional number of venues.