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0 London will have to wait a bit longer to see one of 2020’s most hotly anticipated exhibitions: a full-dress Marina Abramović survey that was initially slated for the fall. That eagerly awaited exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts—the first by a living female artist in its prestigious main galleries and Abramović’s first-ever survey in London—has been postponed to 2021, so that the artist-run nonprofit can focus on its annual open-submission exhibition held in the summer. “They have to move everything, but my show is on,” she told ARTnews.
Abramović was referring to the Royal Academy’s dramatically reordered exhibition schedule, which has since seen the cancelation of an Angelica Kauffman blockbuster and a Paul Cézanne survey. The changes came as the institution confronts the impact of the coronavirus shutdown, which Axel Rüger, the museum’s secretary and chief executive, said is costing the Royal Academy £1 million ($1.2 million) per month. The institution has yet to lay off or furlough any workers.
“That is serious money, and we cannot recover it because no one is giving us that time back,” he said, adding that the Royal Academy is talking to the U.K. government about emergency relief funding. “It is an urgent situation.”
The stakes could not be higher for the Royal Academy. Unlike its London peers—among them Tate, National Gallery, and the British Museum—the Royal Academy does not receive governmental funding, so it relies on the income it generates from exhibition tickets, the sale of art, sponsorship, and its many members. Because of the months-long closure, the institution is facing one of the biggest financial challenges in its 250-year history.
Nevertheless, the show—or, at least, some of the shows—must go on. The Abramović exhibition is now slated for the fall of next year, and it will include some of the artist’s most famous works. “We have almost 80 percent of the show ready,” Abramović said. “I have never been more ready in my life. So, now I have an entire year to rethink or change things,” which she hopes will make for “the best show of my life.”
