'The everlasting exchange' is a cycle of three meetings, set up by MUDEM in cooperation with MAXXI - National Museum of 21st-Century Arts, to tell the story of money's constant and unbreakable relationship with the main facets of human life: thinking and philosophy, beauty, art and its worth, and innovation, technology and finance.
On 26 November, the Carlo Scarpa room at MAXXI is hosting the second meeting of the cycle, 'Money and art: the enigma of value', an open conversation on the meaning and value of works of art, with Guido Maria Brera, business manager and writer, and the artist Cesare Pietroiusti.
How much is a work of art worth? The criteria for deciding this used to be highly objective and looked at tangible features, such as: the work's size and surface, the techniques used, the quantity and quality of the raw materials, the subject, the number of days it took to create it, and so on. Nowadays art attracts capital because of how it combines aesthetic, symbolic and financial value. It has also become an investment that carries some risk and opaqueness: volatile prices, very little transparency, conflicts of interest and speculation. These different dimensions all contribute to measuring the fame of an artist and the value of a work of art's beauty, originality, importance and capacity to provoke a reaction. How to put a price on these abstract and subjective values is an enigma worth exploring.
The cycle of meetings ends with the 'From gold to digital: innovation, technology and finance' event on 5 December.
Free admission, subject to availability
