This paper explores processes of economisation in the context of publicly funded visual art exhibitions, a setting that has not traditionally been characterised as a market. It examines modes of exchange in the art world and how artists’ work can be transformed into objects of market exchange through the use of a regulatory device. It conceptualises the economisation processes of exhibition work as consisting of objectification, classification, and valuation. Building on previous work on economic exchange, including gift exchange and market exchange, it analyses a transition from a specific form of gift exchange – swings and roundabouts – to a form of market exchange – quid pro quo. The paper shows how new exchange practices in the Swedish art market evolved with the introduction of the so-called MU agreement and how it contributed to transforming parts of artists’ exhibition work into objects of market exchange. Despite these new practices, however, the status of the exhibition work as an object of swings and roundabouts exchange was maintained. Exhibition work instead forms a hybrid exchange object, consisting of both swings and roundabouts and quid pro quo exchanges.

This paper aims at exploring how organizational actors are engaged in constructing a coherentorganizational field of cultural incubators, through which they may coach and develop cultural workers intosustainable businesses in which the precarious nature of cultural work can be reduced. The study is based on aqualitative study of creative incubators in Sweden and their national association Creartive, representing creativeincubators in Sweden. The role and practices of incubators and of their national association are analyzed here toidentify the institutional work of these actors to create a new organizational field in which a more sustainable wayof doing creative work can be achieved. Our preliminary findings show a significant engagement in processes oftypifying creative incubators and creative workers (make them alike as a “type”) and at the same time ofdifferentiating them. 

The art market is traditionally associated with materiality, techniques, artisanship, and physical form, yet materialist approaches to studying artistic markets have been scarce. In order to extend the research area of arts marketing with a more materially and pragmatically oriented approach, this chapter turns to the inter-disciplinary area of constructivist market studies, which builds on actor-network theory (ANT). The chapter discusses market products of graffiti and street art – art forms that traditionally resist commodification and which are perceived as anti-commercial, ephemeral, and illegitimate. In adopting an approach focused on materiality and the studying of actions, it is possible to observe the practices through which an artwork is produced to fit economic markets, which involve human actors such as artists and buyers, as well as nonhuman actors such as spray cans and building permits. A materialistic lens on empirical fieldwork enables interesting findings and analysis of the everyday practices and the use of artistic devices, which otherwise could have been missing in the construction of new knowledge on art production in contemporary art markets.