Can Government-Sponsored Museum Exhibitions Influence Art Market? An Empirical Investigation in Art Auction Market

摘要

Whether government-sponsored museums can influence art market is an empirical question. This paper investigates the relationship between government-sponsored museum exhibitions and auction price of the artworks. We focus on the artists who exhibited on the Taipei Fine Art Museum (TEAM) and investigate whether the exhibitions at TFAM influence the hammer prices of their artwork in the following auctions. We link the TFAM exhibition data from 2000 to 2015 to the global auction data at www.artprice.com dated from 2000 to 2016. The Hedonic model and Tobit model are employed to test the relationship between hammer price and exhibitions. The results imply that museum exhibitions do not have direct influences on art auction price. However, we find evidence of an indirect "certification" effect of TFAM exhibitions. Exhibitions do not have significance on the hammer price, but the interaction terms between exhibition and other pricing factors are significant. Once an artist has been "certified" by museum exhibitions, his/her artwork will be evaluated by the common industry practice such as the pricing factors. These results also support the claim that government-sponsored museum exhibitions are leading indicators to auction market performance.