Life after the coronavirus will be very different.
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The title of this essay isnt mine.
I thought it was too sensationalistic and untrue.
I freaked out, scared, and asked him to change it.
Why didnt I see it that way originally?
I thought, Dont be a disasterist; well see what happens.
In particular, Im a true believer from one particular former bygone world.
This optimism has all always made me sure that the art world could, and would, survive anything.
But last week, that optimism started to die.
Some of it may be gone even now.
A lot depends on how long this all lasts, of course.
endless art fairs, always flying to biennials and exhibitions around the world.
Artists were leaving smaller galleries in droves for megagalleries.
COVID-19 has multiplied this a hundredfold.
Most galleries dont have cash reserves to go through a lockdown of six months.
The majority of galleries arent much more prepared.
These galleries will close.
Employees are already laid off across the gallery world.
Art schools might follow suit.
Last week, the 150-year-old San Francisco Art Institute announced that thered be no incoming fall class.
These jobs are the only way many artists make a living.
(I do not think many galleries will mourn this loss.)
Unfortunately, auctions may be the cockroach in the art-world coal mine.
They dont require much of a physical footprint; much of what they do is done digitally and online.
Art magazines and blogs depend on advertisers, but what will those advertisers advertise?
Are art galleries still paying previous ad contracts to art magazines to advertise shows that arent happening?
A generation ago, newspapers and magazines supported hundreds or even thousands of professional art critics.
Will publications be able to pay their writers, staff, benefits, and their own overheads?
But their incomes are smaller too.
These things keep spirits necessarily high, but they bring in almost no money.
As for museums, theyre all closed too.
MoMA expects to lay off 135 on-call staff members; Mass.
MoCA is laying off 120 employees.
As former Walker Art Center director Olga Viso observes, All those cushions and reserves … have been depleted.
Any institution that has to earn its annual operating budget is in dire straits.
Which brings us to the oldest, most tenuous, and precious profession of all, artists.
Of course, art will go on.
That goes without saying, since art is much bigger and deeper than the business that supports it.
Art will vanish only when all the problems it was invented to explore have been explored.
Too many artists, period.
Indeed, the environment in which art is made is already changing.
This is how our species made most things over the last 50,000 years.
Creativity was with us in the caves; its in every bone in our bodies.
Viruses dont kill art.
Expansion and more were the answers to everything.
I dont think that response would be healthy in this climate.
He goes on, Watch what happens next.
Galleries will go under unless they survive.
I thought I felt the rumble of arts old thunder when he wrote this to me.
In this and other similar gestures, I imagine a new First Days of an Art World.
Whatever happens, were all conscripted into the service of art; were all volunteers of America.
We all want to go the distance for what we love.
That distance has begun.
How long the interregnum lasts, I do not know.
*An earlier version of this piece misspelled Marian Goodman Gallery.
