From the 66th floor of The Spiral, one of the HudsonYards buildings, its windows frame a large real work of art: the vision of Manhattan and much beyond.
From this image that elevates the spirit, Glenn D. Lowry, director of the admired MoMa, puts his feet on the ground. “If you look at the museums in this country, many are undercapitalized,” he says. “If we talk about donations, the vast majority only serve to eliminate the annual deficits of almost all institutions,” he adds.
Their confessions occur on the second and last day organized by Talking Galleries, a non-profit organization founded and directed by Llucià Homs in Barcelona, where in 2011 it held its first edition.
This is the second time that this symposium has been convened in New York, after the success it achieved in 2022, then held at the Morgan Library.
Its landing in the Big Apple was the natural consequence of a project that is growing on a global scale. Although Paris is in a splendid moment, Homs points out, New York is the most central place in the artistic and market world.
“On this occasion we are dealing with topics that allow us to understand what the galleries' practices are, their evolution and where this business is headed,” says the founder, who has the collaboration of the art consulting firm Schwartzman.
For example, one of the relevant issues in this edition is the question of sustainability, an area in which, according to Homs, a change in the sensitivity of professionals in the sector is observed. Efforts are increasingly greater to lighten or reduce the carbon footprint, especially in the transportation of works of art. There is a growing effort to avoid airplanes and resort to maritime transportation, even though it is more expensive and requires foresight, in the continuous movement of pieces for exhibitions or sales.
There are other relevant issues such as the impact of artificial intelligence or containment in the market, with a drop in 2023 of up to 20% in high-value art due to the war panorama. There is money, but expensive works do not come out because collectors prefer to wait to get more returns.
And, among others, there is the issue of the future of public institutions, of their financial survival, of which Lowry paints a dark but stimulating canvas.
It should be kept in mind that in the United States museums lack public funding. Their great source of supply has been donations. But the generational change is coming. Although it is a priority for boomers, their grandchildren have other interests. “We have to look for new forms of financing,” Lowry prescribes. She says that it was thought that restaurants could be a solution, “but they have proven to be a bad idea.” Retail is not working either, with the exceptions of giants like MoMa and the Met. Lowry explains that they turned to NFTs and it has worked for them. Yoko Ono contributed.
One of those ways would be to break with the supposed existing codes and imitate the commerciality of the galleries, the spearhead today.
