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.
2026-11-08T05:31:22+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 | 930 | 6,375,226 | 0.9579 | 82.4% | 95.1% |
| 2024-06 | 930 | 6,095,414 | 0.9610 | 84.0% | 95.3% |
| 2024-07 | 931 | 8,814,926 | 0.9722 | 88.7% | 96.8% |
| 2024-08 | 932 | 6,195,760 | 0.9622 | 84.8% | 95.6% |
| 2024-09 | 932 | 4,499,705 | 0.9457 | 77.8% | 93.6% |
| 2024-10 | 933 | 5,498,856 | 0.9532 | 80.4% | 94.5% |
| 2024-11 | 933 | 11,582,622 | 0.9776 | 90.8% | 97.4% |
| 2024-12 | 934 | 4,640,471 | 0.9473 | 77.1% | 93.7% |
| 2025-01 | 934 | 9,886,468 | 0.9720 | 87.9% | 96.7% |
| 2025-02 | 935 | 6,011,021 | 0.9574 | 81.4% | 95.1% |
| 2025-03 | 936 | 5,812,246 | 0.9518 | 79.4% | 94.4% |
| 2025-04 | 937 | 5,553,208 | 0.9493 | 77.7% | 94.1% |
| 2025-05 | 937 | 4,713,688 | 0.9315 | 72.9% | 91.6% |
| 2025-06 | 937 | 4,728,520 | 0.9383 | 76.7% | 92.6% |
| 2025-07 | 937 | 4,106,950 | 0.9388 | 74.3% | 92.6% |
| 2025-08 | 937 | 4,291,896 | 0.9357 | 74.8% | 92.3% |
| 2025-09 | 938 | 4,846,248 | 0.9390 | 74.7% | 92.6% |
| 2025-10 | 938 | 4,118,430 | 0.9356 | 73.1% | 92.3% |
| 2025-11 | 938 | 4,036,218 | 0.9308 | 71.6% | 91.7% |
| 2025-12 | 938 | 3,776,588 | 0.9220 | 69.2% | 90.7% |
| 2026-01 | 941 | 6,727,613 | 0.9540 | 82.3% | 94.6% |
| 2026-02 | 942 | 4,087,488 | 0.9352 | 74.0% | 92.3% |
| 2026-03 | 943 | 4,505,765 | 0.9361 | 75.6% | 92.4% |
| 2026-04 | 943 | 4,365,163 | 0.9396 | 75.6% | 92.9% |
Δ Gini over the window: -0.0182 (spreading). Top-1% share went from 82.4% → 75.6%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1810s | 35 | George Gilbert I Scott | 5,524 | 192 | 28.8× |
| 1820s | 49 | William-Adolphe Bouguereau | 22,480 | 407 | 55.2× |
| 1830s | 32 | James McNeill Whistler | 14,367 | 458 | 31.4× |
| 1840s | 47 | Auguste Rodin | 25,822 | 376 | 68.7× |
| 1850s | 55 | Vincent van Gogh | 199,586 | 316 | 631.6× |
| 1860s | 53 | Frank Lloyd Wright | 93,900 | 433 | 216.9× |
| 1870s | 43 | Paul Klee | 21,208 | 200 | 106.0× |
| 1880s | 45 | Pablo Picasso | 176,460 | 867 | 203.5× |
| 1890s | 33 | Alma Thomas | 5,649 | 304 | 18.6× |
| 1900s | 41 | Graham Vivian Sutherland | 5,627 | 423 | 13.3× |
| 1910s | 37 | Joseph Allen Stein | 2,719 | 274 | 9.9× |
| 1920s | 28 | Andy Warhol | 158,553 | 289 | 548.6× |
| 1930s | 41 | 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 | 47 | 55% |
| Norman de Garis Davies | 22 | 50 | 44% |
| Paul Cézanne | 22 | 40 | 55% |
| Guillaume Dupré | 22 | 29 | 76% |
| Louis Comfort Tiffany | 20 | 48 | 42% |
| Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin | 20 | 41 | 49% |
| Augustus Saint-Gaudens | 20 | 50 | 40% |
| Giambologna | 20 | 50 | 40% |
| Edgar Degas | 20 | 50 | 40% |
| Jean-Claude the Elder Duplessis | 19 | 27 | 70% |
| Vincent van Gogh | 18 | 30 | 60% |
| Giovanni di Paolo | 18 | 21 | 86% |
| Pierre-Auguste Renoir | 18 | 49 | 37% |
| Jacques Neilson | 17 | 21 | 81% |
| Jacques-Antoine Dassier | 16 | 16 | 100% |
| Edouard Manet | 16 | 50 | 32% |
| Achilles Painter | 16 | 16 | 100% |
| Georges Jacob | 16 | 24 | 67% |
| Paul Revere | 16 | 50 | 32% |
Total works on view across our cataloged set: 3,108.
Shelved heavyweights — high-degree artists, ≥10 works in collection, zero on view
| Artist | Degree | Works in collection | Works on view |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isidore Pils | 88 | 50 | 0 |
| Joseph-Marie the elder Vien | 78 | 15 | 0 |
| Pietro da Cortona | 78 | 42 | 0 |
| Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson | 60 | 18 | 0 |
| Frans the elder Floris | 58 | 12 | 0 |
| François André Vincent | 58 | 18 | 0 |
| Michelangelo Buonarroti | 54 | 50 | 0 |
| Henry Fuseli | 48 | 35 | 0 |
| Hendrick Goltzius | 48 | 50 | 0 |
| Claude-Joseph Vernet | 48 | 50 | 0 |
| Hippolyte-Jean Flandrin | 46 | 12 | 0 |
| Francesco Albani | 46 | 19 | 0 |
| Francesco Bartolozzi | 44 | 50 | 0 |
| Jean-Baptiste Isabey | 44 | 26 | 0 |
| Eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann | 40 | 10 | 0 |
| Ferdinando Galli Bibiena | 38 | 14 | 0 |
| Agostino Carracci | 36 | 36 | 0 |
| Eugène Isabey | 36 | 29 | 0 |
| Giulio Parigi | 36 | 35 | 0 |
| Johann Daniel Preissler | 36 | 10 | 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.