Abstract
The role of experts is dramatically increasing in our societies, where sorting information about quality is becoming more and more difficult. This paper looks at expertise in the arts (movies, novels and musical interpretation) and shows that expert opinion given shortly after the work has been produced (Oscars, prizes, rankings in musical competitions) may influence success, though it does not always recognize talent and does often not survive the "test of time," considered by many art philosophers, since Hume, as one of the possible measures of fundamental aesthetic quality.