Concentration index
How concentrated is cultural attention, and is it getting worse? Tracks Wikipedia pageview Gini month-by-month, within-cohort polarization by birth decade, and Met on-view share.
2026-08-09T05:31:44+00:00
Empirical measures of how concentrated cultural attention is across the dataset, and whether it's getting more so. Gini = 0 means perfectly equal attention; Gini = 1 means a single artist absorbs all attention.
Section A — Wikipedia pageview Gini, monthly
Computed across all artists with a Wikipedia page in our dataset, excluding royals/institutions. A rising Gini means English Wikipedia attention is concentrating further into fewer hands.
| Month | Artists | Total views | Gini | Top-1% share | Top-10% share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-05 | 932 | 6,376,330 | 0.9578 | 82.4% | 95.1% |
| 2024-06 | 932 | 6,096,432 | 0.9609 | 83.9% | 95.4% |
| 2024-07 | 933 | 8,815,831 | 0.9721 | 88.6% | 96.7% |
| 2024-08 | 934 | 6,196,479 | 0.9621 | 84.8% | 95.6% |
| 2024-09 | 934 | 4,500,774 | 0.9456 | 77.7% | 93.5% |
| 2024-10 | 935 | 5,499,970 | 0.9531 | 80.4% | 94.4% |
| 2024-11 | 935 | 11,583,654 | 0.9776 | 90.8% | 97.4% |
| 2024-12 | 936 | 4,641,463 | 0.9472 | 77.1% | 93.7% |
| 2025-01 | 936 | 9,887,434 | 0.9719 | 87.9% | 96.7% |
| 2025-02 | 937 | 6,011,987 | 0.9574 | 81.4% | 95.1% |
| 2025-03 | 938 | 5,813,213 | 0.9518 | 79.4% | 94.4% |
| 2025-04 | 939 | 5,554,294 | 0.9493 | 77.7% | 94.1% |
| 2025-05 | 939 | 4,714,768 | 0.9314 | 72.9% | 91.6% |
| 2025-06 | 939 | 4,729,543 | 0.9382 | 76.7% | 92.6% |
| 2025-07 | 939 | 4,107,878 | 0.9387 | 74.3% | 92.5% |
| 2025-08 | 939 | 4,292,924 | 0.9356 | 74.8% | 92.3% |
| 2025-09 | 940 | 4,847,349 | 0.9389 | 74.7% | 92.6% |
| 2025-10 | 940 | 4,119,648 | 0.9354 | 73.1% | 92.3% |
| 2025-11 | 940 | 4,037,329 | 0.9307 | 71.6% | 91.7% |
| 2025-12 | 940 | 3,777,700 | 0.9219 | 69.2% | 90.7% |
| 2026-01 | 943 | 6,728,701 | 0.9539 | 82.3% | 94.6% |
| 2026-02 | 944 | 4,088,500 | 0.9351 | 74.0% | 92.3% |
| 2026-03 | 945 | 4,506,943 | 0.9360 | 75.5% | 92.4% |
| 2026-04 | 945 | 4,366,278 | 0.9395 | 75.5% | 92.9% |
Δ Gini over the window: -0.0183 (spreading). Top-1% share went from 82.4% → 75.5%.
Section B — Within-cohort polarization, by birth decade
For each birth-decade cohort with ≥25 artists who have Wikipedia data, the ratio of the #1 artist's recent pageviews to the cohort median. High ratios = one or two names dominate the era's attention; low ratios = attention is spread.
| Decade | Cohort size | Top-1 artist | Top views/mo | Median views/mo | Top ÷ median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1780s | 32 | Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres | 12,162 | 457 | 26.6× |
| 1790s | 26 | Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot | 7,226 | 272 | 26.6× |
| 1810s | 33 | George Gilbert I Scott | 5,524 | 200 | 27.6× |
| 1820s | 51 | William-Adolphe Bouguereau | 22,480 | 246 | 91.4× |
| 1830s | 32 | James McNeill Whistler | 14,367 | 370 | 38.8× |
| 1840s | 46 | Auguste Rodin | 25,822 | 376 | 68.7× |
| 1850s | 54 | Vincent van Gogh | 199,586 | 314 | 635.6× |
| 1860s | 46 | Henri Matisse | 41,320 | 427 | 96.8× |
| 1870s | 43 | Paul Klee | 21,208 | 200 | 106.0× |
| 1880s | 50 | Pablo Picasso | 176,460 | 779 | 226.5× |
| 1890s | 36 | Ossip Zadkine | 1,683 | 297 | 5.7× |
| 1900s | 41 | Graham Vivian Sutherland | 5,627 | 423 | 13.3× |
| 1910s | 37 | Joseph Allen Stein | 2,719 | 274 | 9.9× |
| 1920s | 27 | Andy Warhol | 158,553 | 289 | 548.6× |
| 1930s | 39 | François Truffaut | 35,881 | 366 | 98.0× |
Section C — Met display concentration
Of all Met works currently on view (gallery_number set), which artists hold the most display slots? Below: top 20 artists by on-view share, then the bottom: high-degree artists who have ≥10 works in the Met collection but zero on view right now.
Most-displayed artists
| Artist | Works on view | Total works | % on view |
|---|---|---|---|
| A.-A. Hébrard et Cie | 42 | 50 | 84% |
| Alexandre-Louis-Marie Charpentier | 26 | 44 | 59% |
| Guillaume Dupré | 22 | 27 | 81% |
| Augustus Saint-Gaudens | 20 | 48 | 42% |
| Jean-Claude the Elder Duplessis | 19 | 27 | 70% |
| Georges Jacob | 19 | 22 | 86% |
| Louis Comfort Tiffany | 18 | 45 | 40% |
| Jacques Neilson | 17 | 21 | 81% |
| Giambologna | 17 | 41 | 41% |
| Paul Revere | 16 | 47 | 34% |
| Clodion | 16 | 19 | 84% |
| Jacques-Antoine Dassier | 15 | 15 | 100% |
| Winslow Homer | 15 | 31 | 48% |
| Achilles Painter | 15 | 15 | 100% |
| Franz Anton Bustelli | 13 | 24 | 54% |
| William Ince | 12 | 13 | 92% |
| Auguste Rodin | 12 | 29 | 41% |
| Jean III Pénicaud | 11 | 12 | 92% |
| Herter Brothers | 11 | 30 | 37% |
| Brygos Painter | 11 | 13 | 85% |
Total works on view across our cataloged set: 1,778.
Shelved heavyweights — high-degree artists, ≥10 works in collection, zero on view
| Artist | Degree | Works in collection | Works on view |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hippolyte-Jean Flandrin | 46 | 10 | 0 |
| William Morris | 30 | 13 | 0 |
| Francisco de Goya | 26 | 35 | 0 |
| Diego Velázquez | 26 | 12 | 0 |
| William Morris Hunt | 24 | 12 | 0 |
| Gustav Klimt | 22 | 10 | 0 |
| Benjamin Wyon | 18 | 17 | 0 |
| Henry Inman | 18 | 19 | 0 |
| Jean-Baptiste I Huet | 18 | 26 | 0 |
| Leonard Charles Wyon | 18 | 12 | 0 |
| Joseph Shepherd Wyon | 18 | 13 | 0 |
| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | 16 | 38 | 0 |
| Daniel Huntington | 16 | 50 | 0 |
| Mathew B. Brady | 16 | 50 | 0 |
| Katsushika Hokusai | 16 | 50 | 0 |
| Bernardino Pinturicchio | 14 | 21 | 0 |
| Gustave Le Gray | 12 | 36 | 0 |
| Giorgio Andreoli | 12 | 15 | 0 |
| Bernaert van Orley | 10 | 12 | 0 |
| Julia Margaret Cameron | 10 | 50 | 0 |
Sources
- Getty Vocabularies (ULAN) — Union List of Artist Names — biographical and relational data for artists, architects, designers, and other cultural producers.
- Wikimedia Pageviews API — Monthly pageviews per Wikipedia article, last 24 months.
- Met Collection API — Per-object metadata including current gallery / on-view status.