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Arts & Communication

ARTICLE
Tools for the Portuguese contemporary art

market

Adelaide Duarte*
Art History Institute, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, School of Social Sciences and Humanities/
IN2PAST, Associate Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Heritage, Arts, Sustainability and
Territory, Lisbon, Portugal
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Re-globalization: Practices from the Art Market)

Abstract
In the past two decades, the art market has seen significant growth, with scholars
and academics across the globe showing newfound interest in its potential as an
interdisciplinary field. This has led to a prolific number of publications, particularly
through the lens of globalization. However, a dearth of studies from regions
outside the main axes remains, despite the potential for such studies to challenge
globalization. This article investigates the primary art market of Portugal, located in
southwestern Europe, which borrows ideas from the Global South due to similarities
with regions from outside Europe and North America. We apply this concept to
the features from a country, namely Portugal that is considered semi-peripheral
*Corresponding author: and marginalized within dominant narratives. We emphasize the permanent
Adelaide Duarte tension between the local actuation and the global aspirations of the players in
(adelaideduarte@fcsh.unl.pt)
this market. Using literature published on the subject, reports, and interviews, we
Citation: Duarte A. Tools for the systematize the mechanisms of activation of the primary market; the launch of art
Portuguese contemporary art
market. Arts & Communication. fairs; the emergence of contemporary art galleries, museums, and collectors; and the
2025;3(2):3317. discourse surrounding the recognition of the global art scene. Despite being a small-
doi: 10.36922/ac.3317 scale, semi-peripheral market, a willingness exists to internationalize. Furthermore,
Received: March 29, 2024 in addition to its rich cultural history and substantial investments, mainly from the
private sector, the market has attracted international audiences from the artistic
1st revised: June 3, 2024
milieu and thereby contributed to the heterogeneity observed in the Global South.
2nd revised:June 5, 2024
Accepted: July 11, 2024
Keywords: Art market research; Global South; Globalization; Semi-peripheral art markets;
Published online: October 18, Portuguese contemporary art markets
2024
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s).
This is an Open-Access article
distributed under the terms 1. Introduction
of the Creative Commons
AttributionNoncommercial License, Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s Fantasia, a diptych painted by Paula Rego in 1995,
permitting all non-commercial use,
distribution, and reproduction in any “fetched an astonishing 3.5 million euros” at auction at Christies in London, “setting
1
medium, provided the original work a new auction record for the artist,” as reported by a newspaper in October 2023.
is properly cited. Rego, who passed away in 2022, was a Portuguese painter based in London. She was
Publisher’s Note: AccScience known for her figurative, storytelling style, and political engagement, using her art to
Publishing remains neutral with denounce social injustice and violence and deploying fables and fantasies with a sense
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional of humor and ironic criticism. Although she was considered one of the most important
affiliations. Portuguese artists internationally and despite being recognized by her peers as one of

Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 1 doi: 10.36922/ac.3317