Art market trends and practices, whether historical or contemporary, are affected by networks of complex and often competing forces. As moments of political, economic, intellectual or technological rupture, revolutions have significantly shaped art market systems and fortunes, refracting and redirecting collecting ambitions, displacing existing markets and creating new ones, and promoting novel modes of commercialisation of art.

Embracing wide chronological and geographical spans, this conference will consider how revolutions have inflected the circulation and consumption of art and facilitated the emergence of new art market practices and collecting paradigms. The conference is deliberately adopting a broad definition of the term Revolution, intending to encompass its political, cultural, intellectual, economic and technological incarnations.

Interdisciplinary proposals and methodological approaches including empirical evaluations, economic analyses, and studies from the digital humanities are welcome. The conference is intended to foster rich discussions at the intersection of academic scholarship and professional practices, and contributions from both academics and art market professionals are actively sought. Papers addressing contemporary perspectives and practices, as well as under-represented regions of the art market and the Global South are particularly encouraged.

Proposals offering critical perspectives may consider (but are not limited to) the following themes:

- Political revolutions and shifting art market geographies
- The dispersal and looting of collections
- Revolutions and markets for luxury goods
- Political revolutions and artistic migrations
- The markets for revolutionary art
- The American Revolutionary War and transatlantic artistic exchanges
- The Russian Revolutions
- The aftermath of PCR’s Cultural Revolution
- Iran’s White and Islamic Revolutions and the national and international markets for Iranian art.
- The artistic expressions of the Arab Springs
- The Scientific Revolution and its new collecting paradigms
- The Printing Revolution and the markets for prints
- The digital revolution and the emergence of new art market commercial platforms
- Technological revolutions and innovations: NFTs, Blockchain, AR, VR, AI-generated art

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words for a 25-minute paper, along with a brief biography to Barbara Lasic b.lasicsia.edu by 1 March 2026. Successful papers will be notified by 15 March.