For What It’s Worth: Value Systems in Art since 1960

A collection of work by 80 artists who explore the contemporary art world’s fundamental concerns of value, markets, and the business of art

Grounded in the global, conceptual art tendencies that began in the 1960s, For What It’s Worth looks at artists who generate, question, and infect value systems through their work. These works address issues vital to the art world connected to systems of exchange, social structures, or metacritiques of the market – and all stops in between. 

A companion to the 2024 exhibition at The Warehouse, the dedicated exhibition space for The Rachofsky Collection in Dallas, Texas, this book includes a dedicated section, The Value Systems Reader, which comprises an anthology of texts selected by the living artists featured in the Warehouse exhibition, elaborating their positions in the ongoing exploration of questions of value in art.

Drawn from dozens of key modern and contemporary artists, For What It’s Worth explores the themes and strategies that continue to reverberate through art and the world today.

Features works from the famed The Rachofsky Collection by artists including: Judy Chicago, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Annette Lawrence, Seung-taek Lee, Sherrie Levine, Piero Manzoni, Bruce Nauman, Giulio Paolini, Sherrill Roland, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Fred Wilson, and Yukinori Yanagi.

About the Author

Thomas Feulmer is curator at The Warehouse, Dallas – the project/space created by Cindy and Howard Rachofsky. His recent exhibitions Sound as Sculpture and The Sensation of Space developed transhistorical thematic dialogues between artists from inside and outside the collection.

Lisa Le Feuvre is the executive director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, and previously held the role of director of the Henry Moore Institute. She is the coauthor of Nancy Holt: Inside/Outside (Monacelli, 2022).