From artworks to artists’ work: Forming hybrid exchange objects

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.