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Navigating the Art World in 2020: Galleries, Fair and Museums at your Screens
Since its arrival, Corona virus has affected all aspects of our lives and the art world is no exception. On the contrary, museums, galleries and other cultural institutions were the first locations to be closed by governments to prevent the spread of the disease.
The virtual approach seems the only fun remedy to bring the arts closer to the public in this Quarantine times. Hence, while many museums have adopted the format of digital viewing rooms, some commercial galleries are creating other virtual experiences that are allowing them to engage with their audiences, such as podcasts, live streaming videos and social media campaigns.
From LVH Art’s end, after sadly having to cancel three What’s Up shows -Hong Kong, Busan and New York-, the team is happy to inform that they are currently putting all of their efforts into building the first Virtual What’s Up show, which will be characterised by the heterogeneity of the rooms, taking inspiration from different geographies and architectural movements.
On the bright side of the discussion, museums in Asia have started reopening as a result of their victory against the pandemic. Shanghai’s Power Station of Art (PSA) reopened on March 13; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in South Korea is set to reopen on March 23 and The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is expected to open on March 31. We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Meanwhile for those in Quarantine in Europe and in the USA, we have prepared for you this list of fairs, galleries and museums that you can access and browse from your screen.
Art Basel Online Viewing Rooms
The fair, which had been officially cancelled last month after the outbreak in China, has recently opened its Online Viewing Rooms. Preview to the fair opened on Wednesday 18, and from today until March 25 it is open to the general public. Currently, 235 galleries are taking part in the e-fair.
https://www.artbasel.com/viewing-rooms
MoMa, New York
The renowned Museum of Modern Art has employed Google Arts & Culture to reach its public; for now, they have decided to showcase works that belong to the museum’s permanent collection as well as a virtual tour of the recently opened Donald Judd retrospective.
https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/moma-the-museum-of-modern-art
The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
The Stedelijk Museum has announced today on its social media channels that everyday at 4:00 pm they will be sharing a mini documentary from the museum collection. The first film of this promising series has featured the celebrated artist duo Studio Drift. #StayAtHomeStedelijk will also be hosting tomorrow (March 21) a tour of the Stedelijk collection with the museum director, Rein Wolfs. All on their IG profile.
https://www.instagram.com/stedelijkmuseum/
König Galerie
The gallery has started a program on their IG profile consisting of live videos with artists, curators and other professionals to offer insights and give virtual tours of their ongoing shows. On Monday this week, the gallery “went live” with the artist Jorinde Voigt who explained her current show The Real Extent and two days ago, Michael Elmgreen joined the live streaming to talk about specific artworks by Elmgreen & Dragset.
https://www.instagram.com/koeniggalerie/
PACE
Following the closure of their galleries, PACE has published digital versions of the current gallery exhibitions on their viewing room platform. The gallery hopes that this project will enable their audience to maintain an engagement with the arts regardless of these critical times.
X Museum, Beijing
X Museum launched its online project space “X Virtual Museum” on March 5th. X Virtual Museum is an interactive, game-like virtual space created by artist and architect Pete Jiadong Qiang. This gamified 3D experience encourages players to be more active to explore the museum and virtually find out more about the participating artists. The project comes after X Museum founder, collector Michael Xufu Huang announced this January the Museum opening with an ambitious triennial featuring 33 artists under the age of 40, aiming to capture China’s ‘Millennial Zeitgeist’. In light of the ongoing global health concerns, the date of the grand opening of X Museum and its inaugural triennial remains undecided, but this virtual experience is definitely promising enough and not one to miss!
Louvre Museum, Paris
Following its closure, the Louvre Museum has created a platform on its website where visitors can explore specific rooms of the museum, such as the Egyptian Antiquities and the Galerie d’Apollon.
https://www.louvre.fr/en/visites-en-ligne
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Met is one of the leading museums who has made its collection accessible to the general public through Google Arts & Culture. The platform does not only present pieces from the Met’s permanent collection, but also digital experiences of its temporary shows.
https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/the-metropolitan-museum-of-art
Berlin Now
It has been over thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989, the German metropolis that was left divided after WW2 was finally redeemed from its imposed division and entered a path of transformation. Following the fall and the consequent union of the West and Communist cultures, the city burst into creativity and liveliness, creating a fertile environment for creative expression.
At the time, numerous buildings in the Eastern part of the city that once were embassies or factories, were left abandoned and unused, providing a tabula rasa for the city to gather together in uneasy symbiosis and reinvent itself culturally. This new sense of freedom generated an explosion of creativity, energy and culture. Nineties Berlin soon became a loud, colourful and unique playground for art and nightlife. The empty breweries, warehouses and basements became the home of artists and musicians, hyping the city with their hedonistic ideas and artistic production.
“Poor but sexy” was the perfect description for reunited Berlin, but, as predictable, that definition no longer applies. Soon, this wild concentration of artists and culture caught international attention, resulting in a dramatic rise in real estate prices in the city centre. It was at that moment that many artists started migrating southeast towards the outskirts of the city, in the historically industrial neighbourhood of Oberschöneweide. Perhaps it is the flow of the Spree River that is bringing the artists in, or maybe it is just the more accessible prices, but the Oberschöneweide is growing to become the new art epicentre of Berlin.
Internationally acclaimed artists like Tomas Saraceno or Anselm Reyle have moved their studios to the area, reviving industrial buildings along the river in which to let their imaginations run wild. Such is the excitement, that last year the Oberschöneweide caught also the attention of the journalist Gisela Willams, who went to visit the neighbourhood for The New York Times to witness first hand how the artist community is growing in the area.
It is there too, that the renowned gallerist Johann König has announced plans of transforming an old cable factory into a space that will host artists’ studios and residencies. König’s interest came as a natural reaction after Jorinde Voigt and Alicja Kwade, two of his represented artists, moved to the neighbourhood to acquire their homes and studios. But what is the influence that these spaces are having on their art?
Jorinde Voigt
It was in 2017 that Jorinde Voigt took a former warehouse and transformed it into her 10,000-square-foot studio. With the help of the architect Daniel Verhülsdonk, she created what she describes as a ‘huge hall which at first one feels swallowed up by.’ As Verhülsdonk and Voigt came up with the idea of building ‘houses within houses,’ the space also contains a series of multifunctional and distinct areas in the same room. From there, an imponent staircase leads up to a second floor where two separate routes lead to the office, library and privates paces.
Voigt tells Williams that in the design of the studio, colour was also of key importance. Black was used consistently for the floors and walls, while windows varied from different tones of blue and green. As the waters of the Spree River move, colours reflect through the windows onto the walls, and the studio becomes a relaxing and inspiring environment for the creation of Voigt’s celebrated conceptual drawings and collages, resembling sound waves and scientific diagrams.
Alicja Kwade
Not far away from Voigt’s studio is Alicja Kwade’s. Indeed, it was Voigt who convinced Kwade to move into the area, where she now lives and works. Her 9,500-square-foot studio is composed by three large warehouses of metal siding, brick and glass that she connected overtime. The wideness of the space not only allows the artist to store her large-scale installations, but it also has an impact on her artistic process. Indeed, in her interview with Williams, Kwade explained that having such a big space allows for “more professional machinery, more experiments and more communal areas that add to the overall atmosphere on the studio”.
In the first warehouse, looking like a large loft-like space with a little kitchen, Kwade showcases works in different stages of completion. In the middle of the atelier, strings of abacus beads stream down like a waterfall from the ceiling 20 feet above. The last warehouse hosts her office across three floors: ground floor for communal eating and meetings, second floor for the exposition of scaled-up models of her installation and third for her bedroom.
Voigt and Kwade are only two examples of the many incredible artists that occupy the banks of the Spree River. Oberschöneweidein is now this new land yet to be discovered by the mainstream, where the many empty buildings represent endless possibilities.