How important is art history in today’s market?
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“Rembrandt weeps.”
“The humanities are under assault.”
“An educational disaster.”
“Heinous.”
These were just a few of the howls of online dismay that followed the announcement this month that AQA, the last examining board offering History of Art as an A-level test to 16- to 18-year-olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, would be dropping the subject.
“Our decision wasn’t about money or whether history of art deserves a place in the curriculum,” said a statement issued by the AQA press office. The small number of students taking the subject and its wide range of topics had made it difficult to compare exam performance, the board explained.
Just 839 students took AQA’s History of Art A-level last summer (as opposed to 15,789 taking Physics), with the vast majority of those candidates attending private schools. Many of these students have gone on to study the subject at university and will then take unpaid or modestly paid positions in galleries and auction houses that sell artworks for multi-digit prices.
Art history, deservedly or not, has acquired a reputation for elitism and dilettantism. In 2014 President Obama said in a speech that people with skills in a trade or manufacturing can make a lot more money “than they might with an art history degree.” The president later apologized for the remark. Pushing for a similar reversal, hundreds of academics have urged British lawmakers to reinstate the History of Art A-level. The Pearson group is currently “exploring with the government” whether it is able to re-offer the subject, according to a press officer.
Nevertheless, the perception remains that studying Rembrandt or Rothko is not a “serious” academic discipline. Yet this idea is strangely at odds with the prestige that art and artists can confer on individuals and institutions, at least in certain circles.
That disconnect was plain to see on Oct. 20 when ArtReview published its 15th annual Power 100 listing. While Twitter was still reverberating with what the Columbia University professor Simon Schama called the “outrage” of that axed A-level, Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, was declared the most powerful individual in the art world.
Chosen by 20 anonymous international experts appointed by the weighty London-based magazine, the ArtReview Power 100 gives the outside world an inside track on the latest trends of the contemporary art world. The ranking is dominated by curators (14), artists (25), collectors (16) and gallerists (30). Auction house specialists, art advisers and critics rarely feature on the list, and this year none make it.
“Power” for ArtReview is held by those who decide what kind of art is “made visible,” according to the list’s introduction.
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