PLEASE DON’T TOUCH
WINE-AND-CHEESE RECEPTIONS MIGHT NOT DISAPPEAR, BUT ELBOW BUMPS COULD REPLACE AIR KISSES
As disruptive as the coronavirus pandemic may be, there is a clear consensus among area museum directors and gallerists about its long term impact on the way art will be viewed.
First, the social isolation imposed by the pandemic will accelerate and make permanent the shift already underway toward digital presentations.
Second, no digital enhancement can duplicate the experience of encountering art close up, in real space in real time.
As Rachael Palacios, the director of the Heather Gaudio Fine Art gallery in New Canaan, puts it: “No matter how high definition, high tech or 3-D the virtual experience is … there is still a sort of invisible ‘scrim’ that prevents us from appreciating the work as we would in person.”
That may sound selfserving, but what the digital scrim conceals is easily defined: the texture, depth and scale of a piece of art; the moment of thrilling discovery. As a good example, Palacios offers the gallery’s recent exhibition of new work by Kathleen Kucka, a “burn” artist who uses an electric charcoal lighter to pierce layered canvasses. Shown individually on the gallery website they look flat and static. A scanning video shot only hints at their depths and shifting shadow dynamism.
For Bruce Museum executive director Robert Wolterstorff, a personal, pop culture example of the importance of immediate encounter is a pair of Elton John’s platform boots he came across at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. Having grown up with John’s music, Wolterstorff found himself suddenly moved.
“They had the E and the J on the side. I got soft in the knees and of course I took a picture,” he says. “Museums are still about the authentic object and putting you, the individual, in the space with the object. There’s something so powerful about that experience.”
Wolterstorff says museums were trying to adjust to the perfect storm of the public’s waning interest in classical culture and its greater digital engagement even before the closings caused by the pandemic. He says directors he sits with on a regional roundtable think the shock may be helpful.
“It’s forcing us to do something we knew we had to do. We’re all saying it’s going to change us forever. In the future, we’ll have a digital version of every exhibit we do,” he says. “I don’t know if we ever would have gotten there. Still, we’ve got to be careful to remember that sitting at home with a tablet is not the same thing.”
The virus pandemic has forced the Greenwich museum to cancel its May gala and postpone groundbreaking for a $60-million expansion. But because the Bruce also has a natural history collection of animals, birds and fossils, the pandemic and the government’s response may lead the museum to rethink its role as a science museum.
“I wonder if Americans don’t understand what science is anymore,” Wolterstorff says. “That it’s about cause and effect. Bad things happen when you doubt science. Maybe we need to be defender of science.”
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield is also grappling with the paradoxical pull of strengthening its digital presence while preserving its commitment to live exhibits.
“I think every organization is learning to develop digital programming at warp speed,” Executive Director Cybele Maylone says. “But I think this moment has sharpened the importance of experiencing things in real life.”
The Aldrich is redesigning its website and its events calendar lists real time virtual tours that require registration. But the museum also is looking ahead to a major exhibition of the artist Frank Stella’s star sculptures. And true to the Contemporary in its name, the Aldrich already had announced a “Twenty Twenty” exhibit in which seven artists are to create a sort of rolling commentary on current events.
When the exhibit was conceived, the national election was expected to be the focus. Now artists likely will be responding to the pandemic. “The show will give us a first look at what works of art from this moment might look like,” Maylone says. “But I am sure the impacts of the pandemic will be revealed over a longer time.”
At the Silvermine Art Center in New Canaan, the response to the pandemic mirrors that of museums.
“There’s no question the corona crisis was a tipping point,” says Barbara Linarducci, the chief executive officer. “Things we always envisioned doing with technology, like virtual tours or online learning,” she expects will become permanent.
She says Silvermine hurriedly started a Saturday program for kids on Instagram and rushed to put a major fiber arts exhibit online. “We turned that around in a week,” Linarducci says.
Every image has an email link to inquire about purchase. But future exhibits may go further, with purchasing software and more dynamic virtual tours. Fiber art is especially hard to appreciate in a digital format. Texture and construction is muted, and scale has to be converted from labels. The ambitious show, which features artists from across the country, might still be seen in the Silvermine galleries, however. It has been extended to mid-June.
At the Greenwich Art Society, Anna Patalano sees the pandemic from two perspectives. As society president and school director, she’s overseen a “tremendous shift” to distance learning that she says may broaden the school’s reach as well as the audience for exhibits. The challenge of isolation may result in more appreciation of social connections and the true value of direct encounters with art, she writes.
In Westport, the gallerist Amy Simon thinks sheltering in place may make people more eager to buy art. “Clients are looking around at empty walls. I think this will have a long-term benefit for many in the art business,” she writes.
Simon says the galleries least likely to survive the pandemic are those most dependent on the kind of art fairs that draw crowds too big for safe social distancing.
In New York City, epicenter of the pandemic and center of the art world, Susan Eley, the daughter of the Weston sculptor Carole Eisner, runs a salon-style gallery intended as an alternative to white box galleries.
She’s mounted some exhibits online and delayed others that she hopes still will be seen in her townhouse space.
Whether it does and whether it has a reception depends on the virus. Like others, Eley can only predict what the re-emergence from isolation to the new normal will look like.
Receptions probably will be scaled back and the number of visitors at any one time limited. Perhaps there will be fewer physical exhibits. Also like others, Eley reminds that viewing art is often social, not solitary.
“We gallerists are a resilient bunch,” she says. “As the world emerges from the pandemic and social distancing becomes a bad memory, we will revert to our old ways, with perhaps fewer hugs and more elbow bumps at public events.”