Our forecasts for art in the 1920s

Riavw Blogger December 21, 2020 42 0

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Forecasts, like science fiction stories, always say more about what has already happened than about the future itself. The 1898 novel by HG Wells The War of the Worlds it offered more information on the threats of British imperialism than on the potential of an alien invasion. Psychics and tarot card readers feed on the people in front of them, offering interpretations of their clients' behaviors and reactions.
My assumptions about how the art world will change in the next decade similarly reflect what I am already hearing and seeing now, at the end of 2019. Drawing on the news and opinions that have recently pervaded galleries, museums and my conversations with artists and academics, I foresee big and small changes that will spread throughout the industry. These informed speculations reflect some widely shared desires and fears for where the art world is heading and prove more likely than extraterrestrial takeovers.
Illustrations by Liana Finck for Artsy.

Museum administrators will have to go through a more thorough scrutiny

Museums cannot afford to resist scandal after scandal regarding the sources of their administrators' income. In recent years, we have seen institutions including the Whitney, the Louvre, and the Museum of Modern Art contend, respectively, complaints about how donors earn their money: Warren Kanders (defense contracts), the Sackler family (opioids) and Larry Fink (investments in private prisons). Dealing with such a public relations emergency - and the wrath of staff - is detrimental to both institutions and museum visitors. It appears that while time, energy and resources focus on crisis management, the public's education and experience suffer.
The fact that many museum employees are underpaid only exacerbates staff resentment over money at the top of the pipeline. While unions sweep industry (the Guggenheim, New Museum, Frye Art Museum, is MOCA Los Angeles all unionized this year), donors and senior management may increasingly worry about the well-being of those working at the lowest institutional rungs or will lose the talent of non-trust funds in favor of fairer workplaces, mostly likely outside the art world.

In the years to come, I believe museums will recognize that it is in their best interest, from a strategic point of view, to pay more attention to who sits on their boards. They will move from playing defense to implementing more thoughtful processes for accepting certain funds. Internally, the museums will conduct further research into the past and the wealth of potential funders. It is not an easy task to decide where to draw the line or what constitutes clean and dirty money. But over the next decade, I predict that we will see museums set more and more new guidelines and take steps to avoid such public protests.

Art history departments will become increasingly diversified

University art history departments are gradually replacing their Western art faculty with experts in other fields. As Bryn Mawr professor Steven J. Levine recently shared with me, institutions that once relied on scholars specializing in a single artist (white, male) -

—Now they assign to their non-Western art historians departments experts in specific regions of the world. They prioritize a broader vision, with less emphasis on individual artists.

What the departments will lack in depth regarding, for example, 19th and early 20th century French art, they will make up for in an international perspective.
I predict it will continue into the 1920s. Our global, tech-savvy, attention-distracted, and interconnected era is not set up for intensive study on a single artist. The era of the lone genius is over and I don't think it's coming back.

The pendulum will return to abstraction

Artists will continue to embrace Instagram

Digital artists are already embracing Instagram. Throughout the 2010s, Amalia Ulman conducted a long performance on the platform, creating a mock storyline involving pregnancy and lots of pigeons. Recently, director Miranda July hatched a relationship and its aftermath with actress Margaret Qualley, documenting it via Instagram posts and stories. Jaden Smith joined in the fun, encouraging July to perform a ritual to create a "Hazion Circle" of pennies on a wooden floor. Curator Helen Molesworth commented on the post: “???? ✨ ???? ⚡️ ???? ⭐️. " At worst, Instagram offers a narcissism feedback loop. At best, it provides innovative artists with new ideas and formats for their work. Museums will struggle to showcase this type of art, but it won't be a concern for artists who can rack up millions of followers and buyers on their own.

Mega galleries will only have more mega

In 2019, mega-galleries solidified their role as formidable global companies. This fall, Peace opened a 75,000-square-foot eight-story flagship on West 25th Street, a much larger building than many art museums. The gallery employs an entire curatorial team, led by the former senior curator of Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art, and will soon launch its own editorial content under the leadership of Amelia Redgrift, formerly of Hauser & Wirth.

Hauser & Wirth now operates in eight cities around the world, soon to become nine, once he designs an arts center in Menorca come to fruition. This year, the gallery launched Ursula, a publication under the direction of former New York Times writer Randy Kennedy. And before Art Basel in Basel, the gallery's publishing branch opened its headquarters in Zurich. The gallery also announced its non-profit organization scholarship initiative, the Hauser & Wirth Institute, at the end of 2018.
Meantime, Gagosian opened an office in Basel during the summer, expanding its portfolio to 17 exhibition spaces in 10 cities.

David Zwirner, whose galleries grace four relatively lean cities, nevertheless has established its dominance as a media organization, having launched a partnership with the big five publishers Simon & Schuster this year and a podcast in 2018. The gallery has also expanded into Paris in October and will open a file

Renzo Piano - gallery designed in Chelsea in 2021.

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