In his essay in A Broken Beauty , Gordon Fuglie offers this description of The Art World: It “is in truth a comparatively small and elite cultural entity. It takes itself very seriously, is adequately funded if not always wealthy, and is narrowly self-defined and, as a consequence, self-referential. It is therefore often oblivious to artists and artistic currents beyond its confines. And beaut its self-reinforcing ideology is also exclusive - often mysteriously so - it appears to function like a corporation seeking to protect and maximize its market share, erecting barriers against would-be interlopers.”

Fuglie notes that art critic Doug Harvey has proposed to give The Art World “a fitting corporate acronym, TAW, to designate its insularity.”