Introducing The Art Journal

Welcome to The Art Journal, a new, independent publication designed to make the art market legible.

Whether you’re a dealer, collector, artist, curator, student, writer, technician or assistant, this is a place for understanding how art actually works.

The art market is widely discussed but rarely explained. Coverage tends to orbit the visible: exhibitions, fairs, auctions, headline sales. What remains underexamined are the systems behind them – the incentives and structures that determine what is seen, valued and traded. 

The market is often treated as a self-contained scene with its own internal logic. In reality, it responds to capital, policy, protests, conflict, technology and power. Our aim is to trace these connections through original reporting.

This is not simply about identifying problems. It is about understanding how the system operates – clearly enough to question it, scrutinise it and, where possible, begin to point towards solutions. 

Already published, you can read Sabo Kpade exploring how a buoyant international market for contemporary Nigerian art fails to reach the streets of Lagos. George Nelson uses the sale of disputed Russian avant-garde works to expose how the art market can manufacture value through opaque language and legal loopholes. Lav Mrenović takes Belgrade as a case study of how soft-power policy rubs up against deep-seated cultural and structural conditions. Emily Burke examines the ‘shadow hand’ of luxury brands at the Venice Biennale. Lewis Bush interrogates the popular yet compromised commodification of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 40 years on.

Across the publication, our columnists approach the market from different angles. Each week, George Nelson reports on the fault lines shaping the sector, while Jeni Fulton examines how representation and visibility intersect with profit. Charlotte Jansen’s Help I Hate My… is a new advice column that brings a human voice to the art world, addressing real professional dilemmas in an age shaped by automation. She will respond to a reader’s conundrum each week, so reach out to Charlotte annonymously and share your situation at work. Gabriella Angeleti’s Private Views reports from the US gallery scene, mapping its social dynamics in real time. Ella Slater’s Side Eye, hosted on Substack, tracks how alt scenes are reshaping the mainstream before it notices.

Alongside these, our Art Capitals series brings together contributors from across the world to offer ground-level insight into their local contexts – from Manila to Lagos, New Delhi to Reykjavik – building a more distributed picture of how art functions globally.

If the art world doesn’t quite add up, this is a place to work out why. We welcome new writers, new ideas and original reporting. If you have a story to tell, reach out to tom@theartjournal.com.

You can find us across Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads and YouTube.

Or start here.

– Tom Seymour, Editor, The Art Journal