Picturing Finance: An Exhibition on the Visual Imagination of Financial Capitalism

As the Financial Services Authority's Turner Review (2009) of the current global financial crisis insisted, "Intellectual challenge to conventional wisdoms [that the market is 'efficient, rational, and self correcting'] is essential." Likewise the recent annual report of Chartered Financial Analyst Society of the UK warned that a lack of historical knowledge among institutional investors was a factor behind the current crisis (see Mundy 2011). The aim of this project is to make the insights of the New History of Capitalism available to a wider audience through the creation of a public exhibition at the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art (Sunderland) and accompanying catalogue and website on visual representations of Anglo-American financial capitalism over the last three centuries; together with an accompanying seminar that will bring together artists, writers, journalists and key figures from the financial and regulatory sectors; and an educational outreach programme for school children. By emphasising how finance has been imagined and represented in different historical moments and cultures - and indeed, by drawing attention to the very difficulty of picturing "the market" as a whole - this exhibition is designed to stimulate public debate about how a particular myth of the rational market came to be naturalised and how seemingly impenetrable complexities of finance have repeatedly mesmerised the public at different historical moments. The visual representation of financial capitalism is an underexplored research area in its own right, but an exhibition on this theme provides an exciting opportunity to engage the wider public and the media with the central intellectual concerns of the New History of Capitalism, at a time when the British public is all too painfully aware of the terrifying power of high finance. This would be the first exhibition to provide a broad historical overview of the visual imagination of finance. It thus constitutes both an important research achievement in its own right as well as an innovative way of making accessible to the public the idea that markets are not governed by immutable economic laws but are culturally and historically constructed.

This research project will benefit the general public; school children via an educational outreach programme to be organised by the gallery; the financial services industry, and creative practitioners seeking to represent and engage with them; and policy makers seeking to understand and regulate the practices of the financial sector. The exhibition will be aimed at a non-specialist audience. Its history of visual representations of finance will enhance popular understanding of how the "myth of the rational market" has been constructed historically, and will therefore stimulate much needed public debate on the nature and proper role of high finance in the UK economy.

The Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland has been uniquely successful in creating public debate. Previous touring exhibitions have reached 122,000 visitors; secured major coverage in every national broadsheet across the political and social spectrum, from the Financial Times and Telegraph to the Guardian and Independent; and seen publications with print runs of 2000-4000 sold out. We imagine that this exhibit will gain an immediate audience of between 7500-9000 which will be increased to between 8500-12000 through an online presence. We also estimate a press coverage reaching between 60,000-550,000 readers. As the collapse of Northern Rock signalled the beginning of the current financial crisis, it is fitting that the exhibition should be located in the North East.

The seminar for invited artists, academics, journalists, public intellectuals, and senior figures from the banking and regulatory sector will offer a range of professionals the opportunity for understanding how financial services are viewed by those external to it, and some of the hidden assumptions built into the industry, and will help generate debate in the media for the exhibition and the themes that it explores. Finally, the PDRA will gain research skills, as well as significant experience in working with third sector organisations to translate academic research into public events.