Misattribution stigma and contagion: how did the art auction market react to Australian “Black art scandals”?

Fry, TRL ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3763-5152 and Coslor, E, 2024. Misattribution stigma and contagion: how did the art auction market react to Australian “Black art scandals”? Journal of Cultural Economics. ISSN 0885-2545

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Abstract

In 1999, two major stories hit the media concerning the authenticity of artworks by two of Australia’s leading Indigenous artists. These incidents were quickly tagged as "Black art scandals," with both artists disavowing the production of the questioned works. We theorize the market impacts through the lens of stigma, given that, in the art market, uncovering fakes and forgeries can trigger panic among an artist’s buyers. Our proposed mechanism suggests that negative media attention surrounding misattributed works stigmatizes both the artist’s name and their artworks. Additionally, we highlight the potential for stigma transfer to other artists within the same style or genre (category-level contagion). Our results show a decline in the clearance rate and weak evidence of a drop in sales value for auctions held after the news stories broke. We propose stigma as a useful lens for future research in cultural economics.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Cultural Economics
Creators:	Fry, T.R.L. and Coslor, E.
Publisher:	Springer (part of Springer Nature)
Date:	11 November 2024
ISSN:	0885-2545
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s10824-024-09526-w DOI 2279255 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s) 2024. This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use (https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/policies/accepted-manuscript-terms), but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10824-024-09526-w
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	08 Nov 2024 09:55
Last Modified:	17 Dec 2024 10:22
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52528

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