An innovative art gallery demonstrates how to show and sell art online

AS THE CORONAVIRUS spread across the world, cultural institutions were quick to shut up shop. The Metropolitan Museum of Art closed on March 13th, ten days before New York went into lockdown. By the time Britain imposed social-distancing measures on March 23rd, the four Tate galleries and the National Gallery had shut . Art Basel, Frieze and Paris Photo all cancelled their spring fairs.

Yet few organisations have adapted to the challenges of lockdown as effortlessly as David Zwirner, an international gallerist. Mr Zwirner, the son of a German art dealer, established his own gallery in New York in 1993, and has since opened two more outlets in the city as well as spaces in London, Paris and Hong Kong.

Mr Zwirner decided that the digital gallery experience could be improved. In 2018 he hired Elena Soboleva, a social-media influencer who worked for Artsy, a fine-art website, to develop the gallery’s online presence as a seventh exhibition space. Ms Soboleva put together a small team and oversaw a redesign of the site; as well as making extra material about the galleries’ physical exhibitions available, she set up small-scale online-only “viewing rooms” which offered informative commentary.

Now, with all six physical galleries closed due to the coronavirus, online is Zwirner’s only business. To help fellow gallerists, some of them so young that this is their first major crisis, he is allowing them to host exhibitions on the Zwirner platform for nothing. So far, 12 small galleries, first in New York and then in London, have taken Mr Zwirner up on the offer; 12 more in Los Angeles have just signed up. Sales for the London galleries have been particularly strong.

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