Interactive Version: https://barabasilab.com/art/work/museum-governance


The Art Board project is a big data-driven look at the governance of art institutions. Who should sit on a museum board has become an increasingly sensitive issue in the art world, as long-standing conversations about wealth concentration and influence in patronage have become focused on the hot-button topics of gender and racial equity, and of whether donors with problematic sources of wealth should have a seat at the table.
To look at who is currently controlling our art institutions, the BarabásiLab obtained the tax forms filed by all US nonprofits, which enabled it to identify the board members active in the art space. By ascertaining which board members sit on multiple boards, the team was able to turn the data into a map that charts the joint governance of seemingly independent institutions. The Art Board Print is the labeled map, the nodes of which are art institutions and the links the individuals who sit on their boards. The work illustrates that a few individuals who sit on multiple boards play outsize roles in the insular world of high-profile art.
The Art Board Data Sculpture displays the same information while obscuring the identity of institutions and board members, reinforcing the role of connectedness of the art ecosystem. Credits: The Art Board, by A.-L. Barabási, A. Grishchenko, A. Gates, and L. Shekhtman, 2019 The Art Board Data Sculpture: A.-L. Barabási, Cs. Both