ABSTRACT
Imagine you find yourself standing at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, captivated by the artwork in front of you. While understanding that “modern” art doesn't necessarily mean “new” art, a question still bubbles up: what are the chances that this modern artist is Gen X or even younger, i.e., born in 1965 or later? In this chapter, we'll perform a Bayesian analysis with the goal of answering this question. To this end, let π denote the proportion of artists represented in major U.S. modern art museums that are Gen X or younger. The Beta(4,6) prior model for π (Figure 8.1) reflects our own very vague prior assumption that major modern art museums disproportionately display artists born before 1965, i.e., π most likely falls below 0.5. After all, “modern art” dates back to the 1880s and it can take a while to attain such high recognition in the art world.
