Before the Labels: How Art Galleries Organized Exhibitions in the Absence of Categories

• In Event: Knowledge, Expertise, and Economic Valuation

Abstract

This study examines how market intermediaries achieve selection coherence when established categories are unavailable. We analyze curatorial decisions in the early twentieth-century European art market, a setting characterized by rapid stylistic innovation preceding the crystallization of canonical artistic movements. Using data from the Database of Modern Exhibitions documenting 3,790 exhibition records across 163 galleries between 1904 and 1916, we employ relational hyperevent models to estimate the probability that specific combinations of paintings are selected for co-exhibition. We find that galleries exhibit strong tendencies toward subset repetition: paintings previously exhibited together are significantly more likely to be bundled again, and this effect strengthens over time. This relational bundling is more pronounced for emerging styles lacking established categories than for mature styles, and operates beyond stylistic similarity, indicating that co-exhibition history constitutes an independent selection criterion. These findings demonstrate that selection coherence can emerge from relational mechanisms when established categories are unavailable. Intermediaries achieve coherence by repeating configurations that have worked before, generating consistent selection patterns without requiring explicit categories.

Authors

• Erwanghao Yu, City University-London

• Alessandro Lomi, University of Italian Switzerland

• Simone Santoni, City, University of London