From Email to E-Art: The Global Art Market Under COVID-19

Photography by Xiahanqing Wu

As the virus tightens its grip on more countries, the global art market feels the squeeze.

Hong Kong, the Asian artists’ gateway to the global art market, quickly responds to the pandemic outbreak after the Department of Health confirmed the first case on Jan. 23.

The trading volume dropped into a freezing point. Galleries and art sellers have had to change the business formats of their services. Additionally, the future of the art market has become unprecedentedly unclear.

“We are going through a big bang.” Wenxia Chen, the Hong Kong-based representative of BOCCARA Art, described the tough conditions they have confronted in the past few months of 2020.

She is now stuck at her home in Nice, France. Because of the lockdown, her husband and she can hardly go out, let alone fly back to Hong Kong. “Both my company and myself are in a great unknown.”

Yes, at the physical level, the operation of BOCCARA Art and her works are temporarily suspended. Until further notice, her company and herself do not know when and how to move next.

Undoubtedly, the loss will be huge. Chen says she did not check the financial report of the first quarter. But it is crystal-clear that China, the U.S., and the U.K. account for over 80 percent of total global art sales by value, according to an art column of Deutsche Welle (DW).

Photography by Xiahanqing Wu

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However, the Art Basel and UBS bank Art Market 2020 report have already indicated that global art sales reached $64.1 billion (€56.7 billion) in 2019. Therefore, it leads to an overall decline of 5 percent from the previous year. With more and more countries getting bogged down in the coronavirus, sales in the upcoming quarters will go down even more.

In the practical realm, on Feb. 24, Sotheby's, the well-known auction house, published a revised schedule for its spring auctions: some of its sales were postponed, while others were moved to New York. In Hong Kong, the Art Basel got canceled. A few days after, the Hong Kong Arts Festival stopped all of its exhibitions and activities.

According to Chen, BOCCARA Art also made contingency plans and temporarily shut down all the 10 galleries from Seoul to Lima. Now, they moved all their business online, including the video tours of the galleries and online transactions via online communications, such as email.

Thanks to the Internet, the art world can adapt to the pandemic.

“Now, although customers are not allowed to physically visit our galleries and to see these artworks, they are still welcomed to send us emails to book a virtual tour with professional guides,” Chen adds.

In fact, BOCCARA Art does have long-term cohesive cooperation with multiple online platforms for fine arts, such as Artnet and Artsy. Therefore, Chen and her teams’ job is to make sure that all of the online transactions operate fluently. This is nothing new to them.

The real challenge, as well as the innovation to them, is the video tour. “We have never done this before,” Chen says. “Even for those big museums, public or nation-funded museums, the video tour, or even the VR-based virtual tour, is a new product. The whole thing is in the stage of fumbling.”

Because, as Chen mentions, even though all the artworks can be presented in a video or photo slides with audio guides, the first-hand experience is hard to replace. Cocoa Zhou, a Hong Kong-based blogger, talks about her feelings to video tours of museums and galleries.

“I’ve participated in several of them, but I just don’t like the video tours. I can easily be distracted by other random things popping up to my mind when I watch the video tours.”

Zhou also talks about the uniqueness of the traditional sightseeing in museums and galleries. “I will never get distracted when I immerse myself in the exhibitions. I always mute my phone so that I can put myself in the art world. That’s the most amazing and unique part that physical tours give to me.”

Photography by Xiahanqing Wu

How to reproduce the feelings of actual tours becomes the main problem for Chen and her team. And according to Zhou, it is a common problem for lots of museums and galleries.

Furthermore, Chen emphasizes that they will not shift their focus on the online business after the pandemic. “We will continue the previous plans and bring our artworks to exhibitions and art fairs around the world. The big direction won’t change merely because of the lockdown for several months.” Chen adds.

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Photography by Xiahanqing Wu

Larissa Buchholz, a professor and specialist in the global art market from Northwestern University, has a similar opinion about the global art market in the pro-pandemic time.

“Since, traditionally, the art business is mostly based on trusts and interpersonal relationships between sellers and buyers, the online transaction actually takes a very small part of the sales. According to my research, it is only about 2 to 3 percent. The tradition is not easy to break. So, I think the most visible change will just be a huge decline in trading volume in the upcoming months or even years.”

During the pandemic, you are encouraged to buy a piece of sculpture online and receive an international package in front of your house. But after that, the reopened galleries still welcome you to visit.