Wondering about the future of the art world? This book has you covered

When the pandemic hit, writer and cultural consultant András Szántó didn’t let the crisis go to waste. He picked up the phone and called the museum director for a series of interviews that make up his 2021 book The future of museums. This led to his next book, On the Physical Decoration of Museums, which collected conversations with architects under the title Imagine the future museum (2022). The final book in the trilogy is Santo’s latest and ambitious book. The future of the art worldwhich brings together a complete set of 38 interviews conducted between April 2024 and June 2025 with many different stakeholders in the art ecosystem, from artists, curators, collectors, patrons, members of the art industry (dealers, auctioneers, art fair directors) to sociologists, philosophers and policymakers.

As in the previous two volumes, Santo spends a lot of time discussing museums and how they should develop. But this time he’s letting artists into the room, and not everyone thinks the museum will be on the menu going forward.

“I think the museum as a building may not survive,” Agnieszka Kurant, a Polish-born, New York-based artist, told him. “I have a strong feeling that maybe in a thousand years there won’t be museums anymore. Society, culture and technology will change so rapidly that keeping up with what’s new will become even more important. We’re already observing this acceleration. There may be places besides museums where people can engage with what’s happening now, or create new, unknown forms of experience that are difficult to classify.”

By far the most interesting part of Santo’s latest book is his subjects’ willingness to risk their lives to criticize the current state of the art world, or to make predictions about the future. Not surprisingly, the most compelling speculation comes from artists.

At Santo’s urging, artist and writer Joshua Citarella sketched out the outlines of a dystopia and a utopia, in which the museum “becomes the prospect of a manifestation of political disobedience” in such an extreme way that the museum’s function as a “public square…” might be shut down. Beyond that, museums may become “large private collections accessible only to the super-rich.” Citarella’s utopia, by contrast, involves “investing in artists’ studio space” and “cultivating an entire generation of artists within the confines of a museum.” “These institutions,” Citarella said, “will produce novel work that we can’t even imagine yet.”

Curant, who is obsessed with science fiction, imagines “the fusion of collective intelligence and non-human intelligence, from microorganisms to animals to artificial intelligence, becoming co-creators of future thought forms and art forms.” Her “number one piece of advice to artists preparing for the future is that you probably shouldn’t go to art school. Study sociology, anthropology or literature. Read books and newspapers. Travel. Go to demonstrations or conferences, intern at NGOs.”

Courant doesn’t mince words when it comes to the negative effects of specialization. “Trying to replicate career models or market success mostly results in cookie-cutter, commercial, uninspired art,” she says.

Her take on digital art is also refreshing.

“A lot of contemporary digital art is not intellectually challenging,” she said. “It is essentially data visualization. To ask philosophical and political questions about technology, we often need to use old or dead media rather than the latest artificial intelligence. What interests me is not the latest applications, but the political, economic and social mechanisms that govern technological evolution.”

(Because the interviews are arranged chronologically, Courant’s comments appear later in the book than Refik Anadol’s and are an unintentional comeback. One suspects that Courant may have simply used the “data visualization” comment to allude to Anadol’s artwork, telling Santo, “Artificial intelligence will most likely become an invisible layer in the human fabric. … A voice within me says that this new realm of imagination will be about a constantly generated reality. Therefore, it is not easy to understand or define.”)

Another refreshing voice is kurimanzutto Gallery, co-founded by Jose Kuri and his wife Monica Manzutto, which is based in Mexico City and has a second location in New York. It may seem like new mega-galleries are here to stay, but Curry sees galleries as fundamentally creative enterprises, and he doesn’t believe they can or should exist beyond their founders. “When Gerhard Richter died, could Richter’s studio continue to produce his paintings?”

He also had some harsh criticisms of the art fair. “They are replicating the power structures that we have always had in the gallery system,” he said. “They are replicating these structures rather than questioning them.” Case in point: booth placement. “They placed the five largest galleries in the center of the fair, giving them the best access. The smaller galleries, which can be very interesting, are located next to the bathhouses.”

Speaking of art fairs, the book’s best self is Marc Spiegler, the former CEO of Art Basel, who observes, “The growing importance of art fairs, aesthetically speaking, has given rise to ‘art fair art.’” To be fair to Spiegler, I’ll give you the full quote: “Let me be careful with my words here,” he says. “Yes, it’s rewarding when I take the time to systematically browse the booths of a strong art fair and discover so much great art. But there’s also a kind of art-world commodity—domestic-sized, brightly colored, less expensive versions of an artist’s better work. At the same time, a somewhat homogenous international style has emerged, like those lounge bars that feel the same around the world, always playing the Hôtel Costes soundtrack.”

As for Art Basel’s current CEO, Noah Horowitz, he has his own ideas about how the fair needs to evolve. “We need to think about more than just the show itself,” he said of Art Basel’s “new retail plan.” Simply put, this is the Art Basel store, where everyone buys Labubus in June. Returning to corporate presentations, Horowitz mused: “Can we be an accelerator for other connectivity models?”

Horowitz didn’t mention the upcoming Art Basel Qatar show—presumably Santo’s conversation with him took place before it was announced—but he did hint at it. “Are there any other cities that could host a full-blown Art Basel? Maybe.”

Later in the book, so does Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. “Twenty years ago, when we established Qatar Museums, many art fairs wanted to establish themselves here,” she said. “I personally feel that now is not the time. Countries that are just starting to invest in culture and attract galleries or auction houses will inevitably subsidize them, which is not necessarily good for them. Instead, we want to first build knowledge, cultivate collectors, and build our artist base.”

Larger galleries looking for their next location might want to pay attention to this part: “Now, moving forward twenty years,” says Sheikha Al-Mayassa, “if someone wanted to open an international gallery in Qatar, I would say yes – because now we have the knowledge, we have the appreciation. People now understand that art is an asset, just like real estate…”

Elsewhere in the Gulf, we take a behind-the-scenes look at Saudi Arabia’s museum-building boom with Riyadh-based cultural consultant Mona Khazindar, who says the kingdom aims to have around 30 national and regional museums by 2030. Two of them are about to be built: the Red Sea Museum in Jeddah, which “will be dedicated to the civilization of the Red Sea”, and the Black Gold Museum, which will be built by 2030. We understand that the project will be located within one of the five-pavilion complex designed by the late architect Zaha Hadid in 2013 for the King Abdullah Science and Petroleum Center. (They didn’t end up using it as a library.) We learned that another museum will “display artifacts, artwork, videos, and interviews telling [date] Palm trees in the kingdom. “

One of the main lessons in Szántó’s book is that things in the art world look different depending on their location. If Saudi Arabia aims to build 30 new museums by 2030, Mia Locks is aiming for “sunset”.[ting] The organization has a target of 2030, so our work is very urgent because we have already reached the deadline! She still has a lot of work to do: Her recent survey found that about two-thirds of museum staff are considering leaving their jobs, with the top three reasons being low pay, burnout and lack of growth opportunities. Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, founder of ART “Counterparts in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Respondents often felt torn between globalization and expansion—the enormous expansion of the art world over the past two decades. “The art world,” said Lu Yinghua, director of Beijing’s Central Art Museum, “has expanded tremendously, but in essence, its ability to think and guide imagination has not grown accordingly. It has become too standardized, too capitalized, and too bureaucratic for the development of art. We need to return to the wild in our thinking and practice.”

The entire book bemoans the dominance of the art market. A typical comment comes from Tokyo Art Week founder Atsuko Ninagawa. “One question we all have to consider,” she said, “is how we can continue to support art that is challenging and makes people think, so that art can ‘pay for itself’ when the market, the attention economy and privatization put so much pressure on art.” For Courant, the bright side of the current market downturn may be a change in the art model. “The current political and economic collapse, the absolute commercialization of art and the current collapse of the art market will lead to a refreshing wave of conceptual art that is not based on market value at all,” she told Szántó.

Yet you can’t talk about the future of the art world without grappling with the future of the market.

Marc Spiegler’s “worst-case scenario” for the future “starts with the premise that today’s art market is fundamentally tilted in favor of collectors. This hyper-dominance creates a fear – entirely justified – that trying anything new will be a deal-breaker. This prevents the adaptation necessary for small and medium-sized galleries to thrive. Thus, the worst-case scenario for 2050 is one of complete consolidation – fewer artists.” Galleries speculatively sell off a handful of artists. People who start galleries are people who don’t need to make money. Being a mid-sized gallery became a hobby for the super-rich, like playing polo. “

If this sounds like a bang, it’s more like a whimper. “To be clear,” Spiegler clarified, “my concern about the art market in 2050 is not that it won’t exist. My concern is that it will be terribly boring.”