Covid has left an indelible mark on the art market 2020, which has fielded unexpected resources despite the blows inflicted by the pandemic. Starting from digital and new forms of collaboration.
Notable changes in the Art Market 2020
The pandemic has upset the system and altered its equilibrium and structures. However, we will remember this year also for the ability to react and the innovative impetus that the sector has been able to implement, online and offline.
The art market has discovered its vulnerability in the face of the unexpected outbreak of a global pandemic. Technology took the role of an ally of art in this scenario. With an unprecedented acceleration, in fact, the various operators have faced lockdowns. How? With online viewing rooms, live streaming, online art sales platforms, and virtual spaces. Digitization has taken over as an integral appendix to the business model of art.
The cancellation of international fairs puts a good chunk of the turnover of art galleries in danger. Significant losses have accentuated the difficulties of a sector that is always on alert. Now more than ever, art discovered how to rely on a matrix of communities and has resorted to new forms of collaboration and networking. The virtual projects shared between galleries and the fair subjects were the tool to remain standing against the wind.
Commitment and Digitization
The exhibitions and closed spaces have damaged many art professions, with a high degree of emergency and precariousness. Therefore, there has been a wave of collective demands on the part of workers in the culture and visual arts. That of the art professions is surely a whole ecosystem. One that connected networks of artists, curators, gallery assistants, freelancers, and museum employees. In particular, all these people from all around the world share experiences and re-establish constructions and prospects for the future.
Still on the subject of plural subjectivities and collective subjects, activism and commitment in the world of art, in December 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement sealed a year that devoted a lot of attention, at least on paper, to diversity.
Covid-19 had a very strong impact on the online art market. It significantly accelerated a process of growth and development that had been active for several years now.
Even the most doubtful and reluctant today can no longer deny that an important transformation of the market has taken place. This transformation was indeed much faster and more successful than anyone could ever have imagined.
No one now has any doubts that the online market is not a passing phenomenon, but a reality that is here to stay.