Art and Whom It Belongs To | Why Art Is Not a Luxury

As I was sitting on the terrace of a Parisian café last spring, I noticed a woman walk by

carrying a beautiful leather handbag. A few minutes later, she returned, the same bag now stretched open around a baguette and a bundle of leeks - unwrapped, unprotected, and entirely at ease. It was, perhaps, the most Parisian image I have ever seen.

I thought immediately of the origins of the Birkin bag. When Jane Birkin first spoke with Jean-Louis Dumas, her request was disarmingly practical: she needed a bag that could accommodate the realities of her life as a mother. The result was not an object of reverence, but of use. Birkin herself treated it accordingly - overfilled, adorned with stickers and personal charms. The bag was not precious. It was lived in.

That, of course, did not last.

Over time, the Birkin became one of Hermès’ most coveted objects. Scarcity was manufactured. Access was controlled. Desire was carefully cultivated. The object itself did not change, but its meaning did. What was once a generous design became a symbol of exclusivity - something to be acquired, protected, and carefully displayed.

Something has been lost in this transformation.

What makes this shift particularly interesting to me is that both the Birkin bag and art share a similar origin point: they emerge from lived experience. The bag was designed in response to the practical realities of a woman’s daily life; art, likewise, has historically drawn from the textures of ordinary human existence - labour, ritual, love, grief, observation. In this sense, both begin as gestures of translation, taking something immediate and making it perceptible and shareable.

And yet, over time, both become distanced from that origin. As systems of value consolidate around them, they are gradually repositioned. What was once accessible becomes mediated. What was once used becomes protected. And gradually, the object, or the artwork, is no longer defined by what it does, but by who is permitted to possess it.

This shift is not simply a matter of cost, but of orientation. Generosity gives way to exclusivity. Participation gives way to observation. And in that movement, something essential is diminished.

Historically, art has rarely existed outside systems of patronage. During the Baroque era, artistic production in Europe was largely sustained by the church and the aristocracy. This is reflected not only in subject matter - religious works, courtly commissions - but in the very structure of artistic labour. Artists worked in service of those who funded them.

With the rise of industrial wealth, patronage shifted toward the bourgeoisie. Artists gained a degree of independence, at least in theory, but remained tethered to the tastes and expectations of those with the means to purchase their work. What changed was not the underlying structure, but the identity of the patron.

A pattern emerges: those who fund art inevitably shape it.

In the present moment, we tend to imagine that art has become more democratic - that it belongs, in some diffuse way, to the public. And yet, this raises a more difficult question: what happens when the public has not been meaningfully educated in how to engage with art?

We are, perhaps, living in the answer.

When institutions struggle or collapse, we often attribute it to economics, to shifting priorities, or to changing cultural habits. These explanations are not wrong, but they are incomplete. A population cannot sustain what it does not understand, and it will not value what it has never been taught to perceive.

If art is treated as a luxury - something merely decorative, supplementary - then its disappearance will feel justified.

But if art is understood as a way of perceiving and structuring and expressing human experience, its loss becomes something else entirely. It becomes a failure of culture, not of funding.

Which brings us back to the question of ownership.

If art is to belong to the public, then the public must be capable of meeting it - not as consumers of prestige objects, but as participants in a shared cultural practice. This cannot be outsourced entirely to institutions, nor can it be left to market forces alone. It requires education, attention, and a willingness to engage with art not just as something to acquire, but as something to live with.

And perhaps this is where the question shifts again. Not simply who funds art, but who feels entitled to participate in it.

To make art, to study it, to take it seriously - not as spectacle, but as practice - is, in its own quiet way, a refusal. It resists the narrowing of art into something distant, specialized, and reserved for the few. It insists, instead, that art remains embedded in ordinary life - used, returned to, and shaped by those willing to engage with it.

In this sense, participation in art becomes more than enrichment. It becomes a way of keeping it from slipping entirely into the domain of status and scarcity. A way of returning it, however modestly, to common ground.

This is, in part, the work of the studio: not simply to teach music, but to cultivate the capacity to engage with it.