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0 A Collapsing Art Market Will Hurt Underrepresented Artists the Most. Here’s How to Ensure Their Voices Are Not Lost
Last month, as we switched off the lights at Goodman Gallery, closing our spaces alongside fellow galleries around the world in response to COVID-19, my head was spinning.
I tried to find comfort in the innovative possibilities of online art-viewing and to seek solace in the healing impact of reduced emissions on the environment, not to mention the joy of extended quality time with my eight-year-old son.
But my mind kept returning to the huge overheads attached to running three galleries across the United Kingdom and South Africa. We are facing a worldwide recession and it is predicted that the economies of African countries will be hit particularly hard.
It dawned on me that the future of the global art world, and whether it will include the diverse kinds of galleries that have been sorely lacking until recently, lies very precariously in the balance.
A week later, South Africa went into lockdown and our fragile economy was downgraded to junk status. For a country that already suffers from the highest inequality on the planet, with unemployment levels impacting almost a third of the population before the coronavirus pandemic, this is a serious blow.
Then I received a call. It was from Dr. Jean Bassett, executive director of the nonprofit Witkoppen Clinic, which gives free medical care to 1.3 million disadvantaged people living in and around Johannesburg. Pulled upright, I was reminded of the already overwhelmed healthcare system in South Africa and my responsibility—as a local business owner—to lend support wherever possible to meet the broader social need.
I felt a renewed sense of hope for the profound facilitating role that galleries, with artists, can play to reach beyond themselves and bring aesthetic joy along with financial aid in times of need. Artist duo Broomberg & Chanarin immediately followed our Witkoppen appeal by slashing the prices of their iconic Chopped Liver Press posters to £25, with all proceeds going towards the clinic. The posters sold out within three hours.
I’m pleased to see that the gallery and artist communities in London—our new home since October 2019—have come together much like our South Africa community. Although the contexts couldn’t be more different, the shared values are strong.
Since Goodman Gallery was founded 54 years ago during the apartheid years, it has faced choppy waters. From opening its doors as a non-discriminatory space for artists of all races in 1966, to fighting a public battle against censorship in the arts in 2012, the gallery has always been steadied by its core values: believing in the power of art as a means for human connection, a critical tool for self-expression, and a catalyst for social change.
These binding values have connected us with galleries around the globe, especially in the Global South, such as Sfeir Semler in Beirut, with which we had planned to share a stand at Frieze New York 2020—a collaboration that I hope to realize in another form this year. The responsibility to sustain one’s business and to contribute towards propping up the fragile infrastructures both within developing art scenes and more broadly within society weighs heavier than ever.
In this moment of heightened need, I have tried to leverage my position as a businesswoman and a gallerist by facilitating across networks, connecting collectors and philanthropists to help purchase 100 more ventilators in local hospitals and, as part of YPO (a global leadership community of chief executives), getting 2,000 “dignity bags” of sanitary essentials to South Africa’s homeless.
