Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Art Business

Abstract

This dissertation explores the evolving legitimacy of digital art within the contemporary artworld, addressing the central question: How can digital art achieve long-term legitimacy in a cultural landscape increasingly shaped by decentralised networks and technological innovation? Through a qualitative methodology involving interviews with digital artist, curator, collectors, and platform leader, this study aims to discover how value, legitimacy, and aesthetic quality are constructed in digital art markets.

Within the art ecosystem, digital art often emerges from community based, peer-to-peer validation, which generates visibility and drives market activity such as high-profile sales. Yet, participants continue to place value on institutional endorsement from museums, galleries, and auction houses, as these institutions confer symbolic capital and provide career sustainability. While digital communities are powerful in expanding reach and credibility through social media and online engagement, visibility alone does not secure long-term legitimacy. For this reason, a hybrid model where institutional frameworks and decentralised networks operate in parallel, offers the most viable strategy for sustaining digital art’s longevity.

Three major transformations are central to digital art’s long-term legitimacy: scarcity, visibility, and multiplicity. First, digital scarcity enabled by blockchain technologies, has created new forms of ownership and financial value. While this mechanism reinforces digital art’s market growth, it is also closely tied to cultural hype and technological innovation, fuelling volatility and speculative behaviour. To diminish risks, rational curatorial and critical standards are needed through the authority of artworld institutions. Second, visibility has been transformed by digital communities and social media platforms, which allow artists to flourish without institutional gatekeeping. While these platforms democratise access to art and value creation, they also tend to privilege trend-driven aesthetics over conceptual or critical depth. For this reason, collectors and consumers engaging online should consider artistic richness alongside investment potential. Their choices hold significant symbolic power in determining what is remembered as culturally valuable, beyond mere technological novelty. Finally, multiplicity defines digital art practices. By embracing diverse intents, tools, and forms of expression, digital art resists reductive definitions. This calls for curatorial frameworks that recognise its variety and secure its place within the broader contemporary art ecosystem, where it should be studied, exhibited, and preserved without marginalisation.

The study concludes that digital legitimacy is not fixed but fluid, shaped by the proportional influence of technological innovation, community validation, and institutional support. For digital art to achieve long-term cultural value, it must move beyond speculative hype and be critically situated within broader artistic discourses. This requires a redefinition of stakeholder roles within the art ecosystem. Institutions should not act as gatekeepers, but as enablers of preservation, reflection, and cultural longevity. Collectors, likewise, must engage more consciously, supporting artistic and cultural value rather than pursuing short-term speculation. To sustain broader markets and communities, combination between physical and digital domains is also essential, enabling hybrid ecosystems that combine immediacy with durability. Ultimately, this research contributes to debates on artworld transformation by proposing a sustainable and inclusive framework through which digital art can secure legitimacy and claim its place in cultural history.

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