06 Sep ARTFACTS.NET world’s largest exhibition database

With the world’s largest exhibition database, Artfacts.net provides exact information on the global exhibition history from the mid-19th century until today. The database spans over 750,000 exhibitions worldwide, 550,000 artist biographies and 35,000 exhibitors in 190 countries. The Artfacts.net editorial team is working as fact checkers to ensure data accuracy and consists of multicultural professionals, who are equipped with knowledge and experience in the art world. Using data aggregation Artfacts.net has also developed an artist ranking system based on the assumption that the exhibition history of an artist is the key factor that determines his cultural value.

With this perspective Artfacts.net marks a difference to other ranking-tools based on prices that artists have been able to achieve in the art market. The ranking objective is to render the exhibition activities of artists comparable with means of quantitative data and objective criteria and thus to carry transparency in the art field. The understanding of an exhibition as a scarce resource in the art world, that generates attention and reputation, provides the theoretical background of the ranking. Both can be seen as a sort of capital as defined by social theorist Pierre Bourdieu in his notion of ‘symbolic capital’ (1979) or by the economist and philosopher Georg Franck in ‚The Economy of attention‘ (1996). In the art world, prestige and attention are as relevant as economic capital and can be converted into the latter. Against this backdrop, a team of experts from the art field, social scientists and computer programmer have developed a complex ranking method, in which each exhibition is weighted upon parameters such as number and type of exhibitions, type of institution, location, internationality of the artist and artist networks. Thus, for example a solo exhibition of a South American artist in a museum in New York will be weighted differently as a group exhibition of the same artist in a gallery at his home country.
The ranking is historic: it reaches back to 1863 (Salon des Refusés) and delivers data for any requested year until today.

Furthermore, Artfacts.net delivers ratings of other participants in the art world such as galleries, curators and fairs where weighted exhibition points are combined with criteria like discover qualities or long-term relationships.