Of course, a percent of this work will be mediocre. We may be entering the most exciting era of art history ever, as everything is being rewritten, rethought, corrected, and examined. It is now impossible to imagine a big biennial or museum group show of all white male artists. As much as a lot of it feels like conscience-laundering and box-ticking, it has completely changed what exhibition schedules look like in one existentially tremendous regard: For the first time, American galleries, museums, and much of the market are getting more equitable - showing, selling, and celebrating more work by women artists, more work by artists of color. Yet all this is bringing something fantastic and necessary to the mix. Some choose to only show overlooked and dead artists, making it impossible for critics to criticize these efforts without seeming churlish, or worse. Heady curators travel the world “discovering” unknown artists everywhere, while ignoring the artists in their own backyards. The art world we left in early 2020 is not exactly the one we find ourselves in now: The biggest change is that this super-wealth and hyper-activity is cloaked now as a social concern. They always sold contemporary art, but now they’re doing it more than ever. Auction houses, the cockroaches of the art world that seem to survive everything, smelled fresh blood - investors with pandemic money, looking to buy art - and moved aggressively. Galleries still earn as much as half their year’s sales at these wingdings, and a handful of mega-galleries control maybe 75 percent of the market. Most of the gallerists who swore they’d never go back to the fairs are going back, as are the collectors, curators, museum directors, and critics who pledged the same. On the other hand, once COVID restrictions eased, much of the art world rushed to return to a system that everyone said they hated. When galleries shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, many, including me, surmised most of these spaces wouldn’t survive. ![]() Somehow, New York galleries - places where art can be seen for free, often run by one or two people on tiny margins - had a tremendous year of exhibitions. ![]() ![]() Photo-Illustration: Vulture Photograph by Filip Wolak Jennifer Packer, Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!), 2020, on view at the Whitney.
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