Misattribution stigma and contagion: How did the art auction market react to Australian “Black art scandals”?

Abstract

In 1999, two major stories hit the media concerning the authenticity of artworks by two of Australia’s leading Indigenous artists. The incidents were quickly tagged as ‘Black art scandals’, with the artists disavowing production of the artworks in question. We theorize the market impacts using the lens of stigma, given that, in the art market, uncovering fakes and forgeries may create a panic among buyers of an artist. Our proposed mechanism is that negative media attention about works misattributed to an artist stigmatizes the artist’s name and their artworks. We also note the potential stigma transfer to other artists in a style or genre (category-level contagion). Our results show a decline in the clearance rate and some weak evidence of a fall in the value of sales for auctions occurring after the news stories broke. We suggest stigma as a lens for future work in cultural economics.