Bye Bye, Blockbusters: Can the Art World Adapt to Covid-19?

THE GUARDIAN
By Andrew Dickson

Out of hand? … packed press view of the National Gallery’s Titian: Love, Desire and Death exhibition. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

In the first week of March, New York’s Armory Show opened on schedule, as it has done for the past 26 years. Despite coronavirus concerns, gallerists and collectors from across the globe packed Piers 90 and 94 on the West Side of Manhattan for one of the ritziest art fairs in the calendar. Only a month later, the Armory Show looks like the last days of the Roman Empire. Days after it closed, European countries had gone into lockdown. An industry that has become synonymous with hyper-connectedness and global mobility is now, like the rest of us, at a standstill. The art market is idling. [More]