Nobody knows how many artists are working today.
Not approximately, not by region, not by medium. We are building the count, in the present tense, before the market decides which names survive.
- Artists recorded at a first sale
- counted
- Artists recorded at a museum acquisition
- counted
- Artists recorded at death
- counted
- Artists alive and working, worldwide
- unknown
The permanent record admits an artist at three moments: a sale, an acquisition, or a death. Everything before those moments leaves almost no trace.
We are correcting the count.
The figures in circulation are extrapolated from tax filings, degree completions and census occupation codes. None of those instruments was built to find artists, and each misses in a different direction.
Anyone who works a second job to fund the studio falls out of the count. Anyone self-taught falls out. Anyone working outside the countries that collect the data was never in it. The result is a field of real economic and cultural consequence in which the most basic denominator is a guess.
What we publish
The Census
The record itself, published region by region: artists working now, with their consent and on their own terms. Open licence, free to read, free to cite, free to build on.
How the census worksThe Global Art Index
Our research platform, where the count becomes published findings on valuation, on the reasoning that a market cannot price accurately what the record has never fully counted.
Read the researchWherever you work, be counted.
The census counts artists in every country and every medium, whether or not the work pays.
Adding yourself takes a few minutes, it costs nothing, and you decide whether your name is published.
Code of ethics
Adopted by the Board of Directors. These bind our directors, our staff, and every researcher and contractor engaged by us. They are conditions of employment and conditions of accepting a gift.
- ITo artistsWe record people, not assets.
- IITo the publicThe census and its findings are published free, complete and permanent, with no paywall and no embargo.
- IIITo rigourEvery publication states plainly what it has established, what remains uncertain, and what evidence would settle the difference.
- IVTo independencePersonal holdings are disclosed to the Board and trigger recusal from the related work.
- VTo our supportersSupport buys the work's existence and nothing else: no advance sight, no review, no influence on findings.
- VITo disclosureAnonymity is available as to identity and never as to existence.
- VIITo good governanceFinances and funders are reported annually.
- VIIITo honest solicitationWe seek support for work we are already doing.
This code is amendable only by the Board in a recorded vote. Every amendment is published alongside the version it replaces.
The Founding Count
The census is published free and stays free. That is the charitable work and it is not for sale. What founding support buys is the work existing at all, and a seat in the room while it is made.
- Correspondent
- $1,000
- Patron
- $10,000
- Founding Circle Limited to twenty.
- $50,000