{"id":2379,"date":"2018-11-16T08:28:24","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T16:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=2379"},"modified":"2018-11-16T08:28:24","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T16:28:24","slug":"identification-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2018\/11\/identification-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Identification, please"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Show<\/a>What are the keys to success in the art world? Some combination of hard work, smart early career choices, artistic talent, access to the connected and the gate-keepers, and a bit of serendipity. The same could be said of many professions. But it’s very hard to discern the relative importance of these ingredients. Research finds<\/a> that those who have attained the greatest successes in creative fields tend to be more likely to think that merit is what got them there (in this they are not much different from the successful in other arenas), while the less successful think luck and other factors have more to do with it.<\/p>\n

An optimistic view tends to believe that for all the random factors that influence success, in the end the very successful must in fact be the most worthy. Although the QWERTY design of keyboards arose from an effort to avoid the keys jamming in manual typewriters, and that a more rational arrangement of letters might better serve the key-less computer age, it might well be that QWERTY survives because it’s really not so bad,<\/a>\u00a0 and that if it really were<\/em> bad, we would have moved on to some other keypad. The pessimist thinks we get stuck with all sorts of mediocre outcomes because of what happens to get adopted first – that QWERTY is crummy, that Justin Timberlake is a star because of the cumulative advantages<\/a> that accrue to his childhood lucky breaks.<\/p>\n

We have divergent views because we don’t have a good way of modelling success that could distinguish between the “actual talent” and the “lucky breaks” hypotheses. In the parlance of empirical social science, our models are underidentified, and the results we observe are consistent with multiple explanations. This is not really a problem that so-called “big data” can solve. Obtaining data on hundreds of thousands of artistic careers won’t get us around the fundamental problem. That many artists with a lifetime of success tended to have early success does not indicate why<\/em> they had early success.<\/p>\n

And so the recent publication in Science<\/em><\/a> by a team of five data scientists, “Quantifying reputation and success in art”, has to be read with the caution that although they work with an immense<\/em> data set on artists’ careers and the galleries that show their work, finding that “early access to prestigious central institutions offered life-long access to high-prestige venues and reduced dropout rate”, they haven’t actually solved the question that opens this post. This is not to say that some artists do not face genuine barriers – geographic, socio-economic – in gaining access to the art world, or other professions that have a structure of gatekeepers, and that policies to help level that playing field would be just, and inspire more young people to higher aspirations. But the paper (which after all, is by specialists in analyzing networks and data, not the specific deep culture of the gallery world) doesn’t delve into who<\/em> has that early access, and why<\/em> were their works chosen for exhibition. That’s not a criticism of the methods used in the paper, which are truly innovative (their visual of the “coexhibition network” of galleries and museums is quite something) in terms of what they are trying to illustrate. But for now, we haven’t resolved the optimist vs pessimist question; that would require not even bigger data sets on artists careers, but a different sort of data altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What are the keys to success in the art world? Some combination of hard work, smart early career choices, artistic talent, access to the connected and the gate-keepers, and a bit of serendipity. The same could be said of many professions. But it’s very hard to discern the relative importance of these ingredients. Research finds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-issues","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/passport.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dIW5-Cn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1833,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2015\/02\/superstars-have-always-been-with-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":2379,"position":0},"title":"Superstars have always been with us","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"February 24, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Paul Krugman takes a look at top earnings amongst musicians, and the 'superstar' effect - the idea that the vast share of consumer spending on music will go to a very small number of performers, since they can reach very large audiences through recordings and broadcasts (see my previous post\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"not actually Taylor Swift","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Jenny_Lind_in_La_Sonnambula-227x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1488,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/09\/how-should-we-rank-the-employment-prospects-of-cities\/","url_meta":{"origin":2379,"position":1},"title":"How should we rank the employment prospects of cities?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"September 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"News sites on the web demand a stream of content, and a sure way to produce something is to make a list. My previous post knocked a recent list of \u00a0'top cities for culture', on the grounds that the way the index was constructed made no sense. Another day, another\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"what are the data telling us?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/whirlwind-computer.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2972,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2024\/02\/today-in-dynamic-pricing\/","url_meta":{"origin":2379,"position":2},"title":"Today in dynamic pricing","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"February 27, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a chapter on dynamic pricing in my old book. In a nutshell: dynamic pricing is where the seller adjusts the current price upwards or downwards based upon the most recent information on market conditions. This is not the same as a cinema having discount Tuesdays, since it will\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2208,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2017\/05\/can-we-should-we-brand-the-arts\/","url_meta":{"origin":2379,"position":3},"title":"Can we, should we, brand “The Arts”?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"May 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Barry's Blog has thoughts on this. He points out, correctly I think, that while individual airline companies - Delta, Virgin, Qantas - try to create a brand image of their own, there is also in the public mind an idea of the airline sector as a whole. When one airline\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"branded","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/coke-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1474,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/08\/the-superstar-economy\/","url_meta":{"origin":2379,"position":4},"title":"The superstar economy","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"August 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The distribution of artists' earnings is heavily skewed, much more unequal than in the population as a whole, between some who earn very, very much and those whose earnings are negligible (if not zero, in their search for free exposure). The economic analysis of 'superstars', pioneered by Sherwin Rosen, finds\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/08\/the-superstar-economy\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"no flat screen for you","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/football-1970s-296x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2186,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2017\/04\/metrics-at-the-museum\/","url_meta":{"origin":2379,"position":5},"title":"Metrics at the museum","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"April 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Washington Post's Philip Kennicott decided to try visiting the popular Kusama exhibit at the Hirshhorn not as a critic, with all its special viewing privileges, but as an ordinary member of the public. The crowds and the rush, as we might expect, reduced the quality of the experience. We\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"too many people pulled and pushed around","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/too-many-people.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/too-many-people.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/too-many-people.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/too-many-people.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2379"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2383,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions\/2383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}