The Global Art Index
Our research platform, where the count becomes published findings on valuation.
Instrument 01
The first instrument examines the persistent discount at which Latin American art trades relative to its art-historical weight, on the reasoning that a market cannot price accurately what the record has never fully counted.
How findings are published
Every publication states plainly what it has established, what remains uncertain, and what evidence would settle the difference. Results that undercut our own arguments are published on the same terms and with the same prominence as results that support them.
Corrections are made in the open, dated and described, and earlier versions remain retrievable.
Why this belongs in a charity
Every existing source of art market data is produced by a party holding a position in it. Auction houses publish to attract consignment. Advisors publish to demonstrate expertise. Fairs publish to justify a booth price. Databases publish what subscribers will pay for.
Each is competent and each is compromised, structurally rather than morally: nobody who owns the asset can price it disinterestedly, and nobody who does not own it has the resources to try.
A charitable organisation can. We hold no inventory, take no commission and advise no collector. We are not in the market we measure. That renunciation is not modesty, it is the method: a finding that could be sold would be shaped by the sale.
The count comes first
Findings on valuation rest on the census. Before a market can be measured against the art it trades, someone has to establish who is making that art now.