Olav Velthuis is Professor at the Department of Sociology of the University of Amsterdam, specializing in economic sociology, sociology of the arts and cultural sociology. His research interests include the globalization of art markets, the interrelations between market and gift exchange, the platformization of sex work, the rise of private art museums, and the valuation and pricing of contemporary art. Before moving to the University of Amsterdam, Velthuis worked as a Staff Reporter Globalization for the Dutch daily de Volkskrant, as an Assistant Professor at the University of Konstanz and as a Post-Doc researcher at Columbia University.
Velthuis has published several books and many articles on art markets, including Talking Prices. Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art (Princeton University Press, 2005). His journalistic writings on the topic have appeared in among others The New York Times, Artforum, the Art Newspaper and the Financial Times.