From global to local creative dynamics: the location patterns of art galleries

The aim of this chapter is to analyze art galleries’ locational patterns. We successively investigate regional, city and district scales. Firstly, we show that art galleries are concentrated within historical centers of the art market in Western Europe and North America. Nevertheless, we highlight the emergence of gallery polarities in new art market areas in Asia or Latin America. Secondly, within these regions, galleries are concentrated in a few cities such as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Zurich, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Thirdly, in each of these cities, most galleries are located in a few districts, either in affluent inner-city neighborhoods or in semi-peripheral areas subject to urban transformations. We assume that these location patterns can be explained through various agglomeration forces such as wealth, urban and cultural assets, and connectivity. But the formation of art gallery districts also results from the collective endeavour of art world actors’ to differentiate from the already established art districts, and from the strategies of private or public urban developers to enhance land value