"They'd Rather Be Remembered for Their Patronage of the Arts Than for Profiteering Off Human Misery"

"But while Adam paints a detailed and convincingly dire picture of the art world's excesses, she never fully probes its implications. Perhaps ironically, its central weakness is her narrow focus on the activities of the art market itself: Her book largely brackets an exploration of the art market from the broader context of rising income inequality, economic exploitation, and staggering concentrations of wealth in the hands of the very few, all of which have enabled activity at the its upper reaches to continue unabated despite global downturns in other financial sectors. According to the sociologist Olav Velthuis, the art market ultimately benefits from an unequal distribution of wealth, as newly minted billionaires turn to blockbuster art purchases as a means of announcing their arrival."

Rachel Wetzler at the New Republic reviews Georgina Adam's Dark Side of the Boom: The Excesses of the Art Market in the 21st Century.