The history of state or public museums has been the focus of numerous symposiums and publications. Yet astonishingly little research has taken private museums in consideration even though the number of private art museums has risen dramatically over the past two decades. According to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), there are now more private museum spaces in the world than public ones. The majority of these museums are in China, South Korea, the US and Germany, though private museums have been established also in Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, India, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, among other countries. At this year’s international symposium of the Centre for Art Market Studies at TU Berlin – organised in cooperation with the Forum Transregionale Studien and its research programme Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices – participants will be exploring the background, mechanisms and consequences of a phenomenon that may be referred to as the »global power of private museums«.