Cosmopolitan Canvases

Olav Velthuis is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam. He is currently studying the emergence and development of art markets in the BRIC-countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Velthuis is the author of Imaginary Economics (NAi Publishers, 2005) and Talking Prices. Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art (Princeton University Press, 2005), which received the Viviana Zelizer Distinguished Book Award of the American Sociological Association for the best book in economic sociology (2006). Together with Maria Lind of Tensta Konsthall (Stockholm), he recently edited the book Contemporary Art and Its Commercial Markets A Report on Current Conditions and Future Scenarios (Sternberg Press, 2012). A recognized authority on art markets, his journalistic writings have appeared in among others Artforum, the Art Newspaper and the Financial Times. Stefano Baia Curioni is Associate Professor at the Department of Institutional Analysis of Bocconi University in Milano. He is founder, former Director and vice President of the ASK (Art, Science, Knowledge) research center of Bocconi University, visiting professor of cultural economics at IMT institute Lucca for the Phd Heritage management and development. In the last fifteen years Baia Curioni concentrated his research and teaching activities in the field of cultural institutions and policies with a specific interest in the historical analysis of the transformation of art system and fields. His last book, Mercanti dell'Opera, is dedicated to the economic history of Italian Operatic music scene in the XIX and XX century. Within the ASK research center, Baia Curioni is leading a research project on the contemporary art legitimation processes and served the Italian Ministry of Culture for different intervention in the last years. He is Board Member of the Ratti Foundation in Como