What Does Developing a Ranking of Leading Contemporary Art Galleries Unveil about the Importance of the National Factor? An Analysis of Art Basel Art Fair

Since the French sociologist Raymonde Moulin developed her pioneering research in the 1960s, the art market has been continuously studied by social scientists. For several years now, art market studies have rapidly proliferated. Collectors and collections, though, have tended to draw more attention than professionals and dealers, which remain less analyzed. In this article, we intend to study the impact of the national factor on the gallery sector by using a ranking of the leading contemporary art galleries in the world that we ourselves developed. Having analyzed the construction of the most significant rankings in the art world that all focus entirely or partly on artists, we decided to create one for contemporary art galleries. The methodology that we used will be presented in the first part of the article. In its second part, we will analyze the territorial/national dimension that can be identified in the most important art fair in the world, Art Basel. We will comment on what is revealed by our ranking in terms of countries of origin associated with their share and diverse positions in the ranking. Finally, we will address the contribution that our ranking brings to the knowledge of so-called globalization.