Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the global, national, and local articulate in the valuation of artworks. It unpacks the "global" by tracking how registers of local, national, and global are mobilized discursively and practically in the exhibition and sale of a group of artworks in a Mumbai gallery.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how the global, national, and local interact and articulate in the valuation of artworks in Mumbai, India. Following the call of this panel, I argue that one way to clarify and specify what is meant by the "global" in art worlds, is to track how different registers of local, national, and global are mobilized discursively and practically in the production, display, and circulation of artworks. Specifically, this paper takes the case of the local exhibition and sale of a group of artworks by modernist artist Maqbool Fida Husain, drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017-2019. It considers how the exhibition and sale in a Mumbai gallery of artworks by a globally branded and sold Indian artist happens via multiple scales and registers. These range from the mobilization of local (city-based) relationship networks, knowledge, resources, and histories; to national art histories and networks of collectors; to the global circulation and valuation of Husain's work over the last four decades via auction houses, exhibitions, media, scholarly writing, and Husain's own global mobility during his lifetime. The materiality of the artworks notwithstanding, what we find is that the "global"—histories, circulation, and promotion—of artworks and artists both enables extremely local mobility, circulation, and valuation in certain situations, while it hinders these processes in others.