Katja Zigerlig - Art, Sex & Money: Gender Inequity in the Contemporary Art Market

Vortragsreihe im Studienjahr 2012/13:
Geschlechterpolitik und Kunstbetrieb / Gender Politics and the Art World

With all the talk these days about art as an asset class, it’s no surprise that the press constantly lauds the most expensive pieces of work sold at auction. According to The Art Economist, 123 living artists have sold work at a million dollar price point or higher, yet less than 12% of them are women artists. Why is the discrepancy still so large, in an era when women have more exposure in the art world than ever before?
I propose the answer is that the underlying behavior of most large collectors, who tend to favor male artists, has not changed. The higher prices being paid for certain living male artists reinforces the notion that their art is more important, and hence more valuable and better - in quality - than art works of female artists. This fuels underlying social notions of “creative genius” being a masculine attribute, yet what all this pricing really tells us is what wealthy collectors like to purchase.
In my lecture, I will address the pricing disparity between male and female artists in the contemporary art world and offer insight into the collector buying habits that perpetuate this inequity.

Katja Zigerlig is the Vice President of Art Insurance at the Private Client Group at AIG. Ms. Zigerlig has a B.A. and M.A. in art history, with a specialty in twentieth century art. She lectures about art collecting in the context of alternative investments, asset protection, and risk management. Ms. Zigerlig has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Reuters, and The Financial Times.