Art world wide open

While the confinement is chafing to us Indians as well, the concern in the art world isn't about an absence of footfalls at galleries and museums - as about the loss of business.

South Korea has allowed art galleries to open with caveats that include registration of visitors, mandatory hand sanitising and face masks. Italy has yet to announce a date when its museums might open. Despite the US exhibiting a restlessness about getting on with business as usual, museums and galleries have put staff on extended furloughs. The only ones who can expect a modicum of work, once lockdowns are eased, are art restorers: who knows the nature of damage artworks have been put through in sub-ideal conditions during enforced shutdowns?

While the confinement is chafing to us Indians as well, the concern in the art world isn’t about an absence of footfalls at galleries and museums — abysmally low at the best of times — as about the loss of business. As elsewhere, Indian art promoters too are making the most of these times by turning to the web, shifting content online, seeking transactions virtually, with more success than might have been anticipated. The community shift to the www is heartening. More people are tuning in for more conversations, courtesy of Zoom, than would attend discussions in the real world. Previously recorded interviews, banked but not aired, are now being shared over WhatsApp.

Many of these are amateur efforts, true — but the net is also a democratic space where people can air, view, diss or dissect content without fear or favour. Camera angles and lights are not flattering; net speeds can sometimes play truant in the middle of a webcast; a fair bit of content may currently appear forced, immature; interviews and discussions, on the other hand, respect no geographies, making them more easily global than when travel or commuting for participants and audiences was essential. No longer. Now, all you need do is tune in — even while working (from home); you can also store, share, and watch broadcasts at your own convenience.

We will be less peripatetic in the immediate future, and virtual vacations and visits will be the norm for more time than we might currently imagine. The Guggenheim this fall? I don't think so.

Will it last post-lockdown? Nobody knows for sure, since the future is an amorphous destination that no one wants to currently risk traversing. What is reasonably certain (despite South Korea’s adrenaline gallery rush) is that the art world will emerge out of the lockdown cautiously, so at the very least we have many months of virtual museum tours and discoveries to contend with. Could it become a habit? I would hazard a restrained yes. If art-lovers and web tourists are currently tuning in for want of entertainment choices, the possibility that at least some of them will flag pages and sites to return cannot be ignored. We will be less peripatetic in the immediate future, and virtual vacations and visits will be the norm for more time than we might currently imagine. The Guggenheim this fall? I don’t think so. Not that some or most places may not open by then. Just that we won’t be travelling in a hurry, rushing to board flights any time soon, or putting ourselves at risk for the sake of an exhibition we can just as easily view online.

One thing that’s set to grow roots on the web is the business of art. As we spend more time at home, we will want to surround ourselves with more, and high-quality artworks. Count on the commerce segment setting up a vigorous art market complete with sites that will help us chart comparative pricing, entrepreneurs shifting the entire art module online, easier availability of inventories with prices, a professional approach to accessing condition reports and provenances, a data mine of works by artists serving as catalogues raisonne — all of them finally opening the art world for its better enjoyment and consumption than at any other time previously.

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated