The Field of Contemporary Art: A Diagram

The contemporary art field has fragmented into relatively autonomous subfields, including the art market, exhibitions, academia, community-based work, and cultural activism, each with its own criteria for what art is and does. Expansion since the mid-1990s came in waves, from museums and exhibitions in the late nineties to galleries and art fairs in the early 2000s. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of cultural production, the diagram is offered as a hypothesis to help students and studio art programs navigate the field. It also reverses an earlier call for fragmentation as a route to artistic autonomy, now judging the subfields to be mutually dependent.