A new report by Professor Robert Huggins at Cardiff University introduces the World Art Cities
Index, the first systematic, data-driven ranking of the world’s leading contemporary art cities, and
finds the art world reorganising into a more complex and multipolar geography.
Is the concentration of the contemporary art world in a handful of Western capitals still an accurate
picture of where art is actually made, sold and exhibited today? A new research report argues that it
is not, and that the real story is more interesting than either ‘New York and London still win’ or ‘the
old centres are being replaced.’
The report ‘World Art Cities Index: Contemporary Art, Aesthetic Innovation and Creative
Ecosystems’, by Professor Robert Huggins of Cardiff University, introduces the WACI, a composite
index built from a range of indicators across fifty cities’ capacity to produce, market and consume
contemporary art.
A Multipolar Art World
New York leads the WACI by a wide margin, scoring 496.1 against London’s 339.6, with Paris,
Berlin and Los Angeles completing a leading five that confirms the continued weight of the historic
core. But a scenario forecast to 2035, built on two decades of longitudinal data, finds New York’s
overall lead beginning to narrow even as it remains first by some distance, with Hong Kong, Berlin
and São Paulo showing gains that would have been difficult to predict from the core alone.
The report’s central finding is that this is not simply a story of dispersal from established centres. It
is a story of reorganisation. A widening set of cities, from established regional hubs to a new
generation of sovereign-backed hubs built through targeted cultural investment, is now building the
institutions, markets and artist bases that used to be the near-exclusive preserve of a handful of
capitals.
A Structural Lag Between Production and the Market
The report identifies a significant gap between where art is made and validated, and where its value
is ultimately realised. Tracking two decades of data on curators and gallerists, the report finds
gallerists remain the most concentrated professional group in the contemporary art world, with only
26 per cent based outside the historic hub cities, against 63 per cent for curators. Production and
curatorial recognition, in other words, have dispersed beyond the traditional core. Converting that
recognition into market value has not kept pace, and remains a far narrower geography.
“The story here isn’t that the art world has abandoned its old centres. It hasn’t. New York and
Professor Robert Huggins, Cardiff University
London still carry a scale of aesthetic capacity nothing else comes close to. What’s changed is
that the space beneath them has filled with cities on every continent now building the
institutions, markets and artist bases that used to be the preserve of a handful of capitals.”
Aesthetic Capacity and Wider Urban Development
The report also finds that aesthetic capacity is not merely a cultural marker. Cities that score
strongly on the WACI outperform matched comparator cities on wider measures of urban
development, including entrepreneurial and startup activity, in forty-five of fifty cities.
The index tracks the emergence of new kinds of art hub beyond the traditional core: established
regional centres, sovereign-backed hubs built through deliberate cultural investment, and a growing
cohort of artists who now maintain dual bases spanning both a Western capital and a regional or
Gulf city.
Balance across Production, Market And Consumption is Rare
The WACI is built from three sub-composite indices: Production Places, Market Places and
Consumption Places. These capture where art is made, where it is traded, and where it is exhibited
and consumed respectively. The report finds that very few cities score strongly across all three
simultaneously. Most are strong in one dimension and comparatively weak in the others. New York
and London are the clearest exceptions, posting high scores across all three sub-composites at
scale:
“Cities such as Johannesburg in South Africa or Tamale or Ghana can now originate and
Professor Robert Huggins, Cardiff University
validate work in a way that is probably unthinkable twenty years ago. Realising that work’s value
in market terms is still a different, much narrower geography. The periphery is a significant site
of innovation, not just a talent nursery for the core, and it can and should form part of a wider
and more inclusive global art world.”
Notes to Editors
About the report
The World Art Cities Index (WACI) is a composite index built indicators across three sub-
composites, Production Places, Market Places and Consumption Places, covering fifty cities
selected to represent every major world region. The report also introduces a WACI Intensity Index
adjusting city rankings for population; a five-category typology of creative ecosystem place-type; a
2035 scenario forecast; and a documented sample of contemporary artists’ career trajectories
tracing how recognition moves between core, periphery and emerging hubs.
About the author
Robert Huggins is Professor of Economic Geography at Cardiff University’s School of Social and
Spatial Sciences and Director of the City Region Co-Lab. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg
College, University of Oxford. He has maintained a long-standing interest in art history, including a
period of formal part-time study at the University of Oxford, and is the author of a related report,
‘Aesthetic Innovation, Creative Ecosystems and Urban Development: Learning from the History of
Art’ (Cardiff University, 2026).
For interview requests and media enquiries
Professor Robert Huggins
School of Social and Spatial Sciences, Cardiff University
hugginsr@cardiff.ac.uk