The Groove 241 - When Art Became a Commodity
Welcome to the 241st issue of The Groove.
I am Maria Brito, an art advisor, curator, and author based in New York City.
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When Art Became a Commodity
A Yayoi Kusama inflatable doll peers over the polka-dot covered Louis Vuitton store at the Champs-Élysées in Paris in 2023. (c) Frederic Reglain.
Last week in New York, there were at least four art fairs, dozens of gallery openings in four different neighborhoods, dinners, parties, and performances all competing for attention. It was a reminder that art in 2025 isn’t just about ideas; it’s about spectacle.
At some point, art stopped being only a cultural practice and became a commodity - packaged and circulated like fashion drops or film premieres. Museums are no longer temples of culture but stages where sponsorships, branding, and viral moments matter as much as scholarship.
The state of things is that art has become inseparable from its market, and the market is inseparable from its packaging.
MUSEUMS AS SHOWROOMS
Corporate logos now sit alongside curatorial labels. The Met Gala, ostensibly to raise funds for exhibitions of fashion history at the Costume Institute, is dominated by the sponsors du jour. For example, this year Louis Vuitton and Instagram were the headliners, a reminder that what was once about education has become a parade for the Kardashians and Vogue.
LACMA’s gala is underwritten by Gucci; MoMA’s blockbuster Rain Room in 2013 was sponsored by Restoration Hardware and Volkswagen. Bloomberg Philanthropies, Tiffany & Co., Max Mara and others line the banners of major shows. This isn’t ancillary; it’s structural. Exhibitions need corporate backing to exist at scale.
The consequence isn’t that subtle: what gets shown must also be appealing to sponsors and audiences beyond the art world. Fashion, luxury, and tech see art as a credibility machine. In turn, museums tilt toward shows that promise crowds and clicks: Kusama’s mirrored rooms, Murakami’s candy-colored universes. These exhibitions generate lines around the block and Instagram backdrops. Museums are not just cultural stages, but commercial ones too.
Behind the flash is the funding. Public money shrank, and private support has become the air museums breathe. Since the 1970s, as government arts subsidies contracted, corporate sponsorship quietly shifted from garnish to lifeline, explaining why almost every major exhibition today carries a luxury, tech, or bank logo at its base. For the visitor, the line between art and marketing blurs. Is Kusama’s pumpkin at the Whitney an artwork, or the same object repurposed on Louis Vuitton handbags? Both, of course - and that’s the point.
Sponsorship ensures survival, but it also risks hollowing the museum into a showroom for global brands.
The Branding of the Avant-Garde
The paradox is sharp: art once resisted commodification; now it thrives on it. Salvador Dalí collaborated with Elsa Schiaparelli on the Lobster Dress in 1937, decades before “collab” was a buzzword. Warhol built an entire career on the postulate of American consumerism, collapsing the space between art and commerce. But today, the speed and saturation of branding has reached a different order.
With social media, everything is designed for circulation, for its ability to perform as an image.
Madonna’s 2023-2024 Celebration tour featured Keith Haring motifs and Tamara de Lempicka projections. Beyoncé borrowed the concept of Pipilotti Rist’s 1997 iconic audiovisual installation “Ever is Over All” for the 2016 video of her revenge anthem “Hold Up.” Lady Gaga launched Artpop in 2013 flanked by Jeff Koons sculptures. These aren’t marginal references, they’re central staging devices. Art serves as authentication: proof of sophistication and cultural lineage, intending to demonstrate that spectacle is not empty but rooted in “serious” culture. Pop stars want to tell us they are smart too.
The result is that the avant-garde, once defined by risk and difficulty, has been domesticated into content. Safe but edgy-enough collaborations proliferate. And when everyone is collaborating: Kusama with Vuitton, Abramović with Massimo Dutti, Koons with Rosenthal, and on and on, the radical becomes predictable
Tech, Screens, and the Algorithm
Technology has accelerated the commodification of art. Beeple’s rise came not from galleries but NFTs, making him one of the most expensive living artists behind Jasper Johns, David Hockney and Koons. Refik Anadol has turned AI data streams into museum installations and massive commissions, including projections on the Las Vegas Sphere: a $2.3 billion structure functioning as the largest digital billboard in the world. Its outside surface has hosted art-like projections by Anadol and Marco Brambilla, wrapping concerts in surreal montages. It is art as an instant global headline.
But nothing has been more transformative than Instagram. Since its launch in 2010, the app has flattened the playing field: artists market themselves directly to collectors, galleries scout emerging talent with a swipe, and advisors field DMs from would-be sellers. The square grid rewired aesthetics, favoring works that “pop” on screens and feed-friendly installations like neon, mirrors, and immersive environments. The result: visibility can vault an artist into the market in months; while those who resist digital circulation risk invisibility.
Significance gets confused with amplification. A painting designed to shine on a six-inch screen might not hold up in person. The algorithm rewards an extravagant moment of visual stimulation, not endurance.
Collectors must remember that a million reposts do not equal cultural weight. The art that sustains value, culturally and financially, has never been the one that merely photographs well. The question remains: does the work matter once the lights go off, once the feed scrolls on?
The New Noise Filter
In this saturation, the challenge for collectors is sharper than ever: how to separate branding from conviction.
Commodification is not inherently bad. It has given artists platforms, museums survival, and audiences access. But it has also blurred categories: fashion show or retrospective, advertisement or installation, pop concert or performance art. For the collector, clarity comes not from rejecting the spectacle, but from discerning what within it will last.
The irony is that in a world where everything is branded, the most radical act may be to seek what or who resists branding. To collect what doesn’t collapse into a logo. To trust not the noise of the feed, but the quiet conviction of the work itself.