Artists are everywhere, from celebrities showing at MoMA to locals hoping for a
spot on a café wall. They are photographed at gallery openings in New York and
Los Angeles, hustle in fast-gentrifying cities, and, sometimes, make quiet lives
in Midwestern monasteries. Some command armies of fabricators while others make
their lives in tiny communities, patiently teaching schoolchildren how to
finger-knit. All of these artists might well be shown in the same exhibition,
the quality of work far more important than education or income in determining
whether one counts as a "real" artist. In The Work of Art, sociologist Alison
Gerber crosses these art worlds to investigate