Crowdfunding and the art market. Rise and regulation of contemporary forms of patronage

Promoting art and culture is crucial for the development of any human society. Nevertheless, such goal is often not included (or even considered) among the priorities of countries’ politics and this is mainly due to the absence of adequate public funding. In this context, an important role has been played by the implementation of crowdfunding platforms. Still, in the authors’ view, the legal framework currently existing in Italy fails to encourage this potential, especially when it comes to the visual arts. This is because, to date, the sole public incentives for crowdfunding are provided under the so called ‘Art Bonus decree,’ which accords fiscal benefits only to those people investing in the restoration of publicly owned artworks. In this respect, the present chapter draws a distinction between campaigns on contemporary visual art and campaigns on existing visual art, finding that public fundings (if any) only address the second category.