Bandwagons or breeding grounds for innovation: What economic elites’ private museums contribute to the arts
- 1Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Abstract
In recent decades, hundreds of private art collectors have opened museum spaces, which they largely finance and control themselves. While such initiatives have been criticized as conspicuous consumption or vanity projects, one public benefit claimed is the display of new artistic perspectives: Due to their strong personal vision and independence, private museums have been argued (including by private museum founders themselves) to showcase underexposed artists and provide artistic innovation. We test this proposition with large-scale exhibition and auction data using Relational Event Modeling. We find that, contrary to claims of artistic novelty, private museums disproportionately exhibit established artists, as their exhibition choices tend to favor artists who have already had longer careers, more prior exhibitions and higher auction turnover. In terms of career status, artists exhibited by private museums correspond most closely to those exhibited by global elite museums. Thus, the potential of private museums to serve as incubators of novel perspectives is limited.
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BibTeX
@article{aengenheyster2026bandwagons,
title = {{Bandwagons or breeding grounds for innovation: What economic elites’ private museums contribute to the arts}},
author = {Johannes Aengenheyster and Olav Velthuis and Alex van Venrooij},
journal = {PLOS One},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0360158},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360158},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Bandwagons or breeding grounds for innovation: What economic elites’ private museums contribute to the arts
AU - Johannes Aengenheyster
AU - Olav Velthuis
AU - Alex van Venrooij
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/09
JO - PLOS One
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0360158
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360158
AB - In recent decades, hundreds of private art collectors have opened museum spaces, which they largely finance and control themselves. While such initiatives have been criticized as conspicuous consumption or vanity projects, one public benefit claimed is the display of new artistic perspectives: Due to their strong personal vision and independence, private museums have been argued (including by private museum founders themselves) to showcase underexposed artists and provide artistic innovation. We test this proposition with large-scale exhibition and auction data using Relational Event Modeling. We find that, contrary to claims of artistic novelty, private museums disproportionately exhibit established artists, as their exhibition choices tend to favor artists who have already had longer careers, more prior exhibitions and higher auction turnover. In terms of career status, artists exhibited by private museums correspond most closely to those exhibited by global elite museums. Thus, the potential of private museums to serve as incubators of novel perspectives is limited.
SN - 1932-6203
ER -