Our Guide to Online Viewing Rooms
From Art | Basel OVR: Pioneers, March 24, 2021
We are approaching nearly a full year since online art fairs replaced in-person events when Art Basel Hong Kong first pivoted to an online fair last March. Since then, innovations with art fair and gallery online viewing rooms (OVRs) have amounted to what is could be described as a digital renaissance. Galleries and art fairs have continuously transformed the collector experience of viewing art online in the last year.
Before the pandemic, emailed digital images and online exhibitions featuring simple grids of images were the norm. Now the new OVRs have become more informative and immersive experiences. With video walk-throughs, podcasts with artist and curators, and the ability to view works to scale in rooms, galleries are recreating the sensation of in-person experiences that we have with them at their galleries and at fairs.
With our clients, we have found some keys to success in navigating the OVRs that help us make informed decisions on acquisitions that have added real value and inspiration to our clients' collections—without getting hypnotized by hours of endless, fruitless scrolling. Oddly enough, those keys to success are not unlike the processes we used when going to in-person fairs:
Plan ahead. Just as with "live" fairs, we map out where we will go first based on those works that are real priorities for our clients. We plan by learning ahead of time what our favorite galleries will be offering at the OVR, and then visit those first.
Focus. Rather than scrolling through the OVRs gallery by gallery, we focus on the artists and types of work that we know our clients are most interested in collecting. It’s easy to get ‘lost’ in the online fairs, and keeping a focus helps us to find works that truly meet our client’s interests and collecting goals.
Research. We then vet the works we find just as we would at an in-person fair, evaluating them according to the standards and processes we use for evaluating all acquisitions. In our research, we are assessing whether these are the "right" works for our clients’ collections using our specific metrics for evaluating acquisitions.
Dig deeper. Since we cannot see the works in person, we work to get more essential information from the galleries—using video to inspect the works closely with the gallerists, and using our network of trusted colleagues and professionals (other art advisors, conservators, for example) located across the world to “see” these works in person on our behalf. Every aspect of a work is vetted for our clients before we make our decisions.
Expand and explore. After focusing and researching the specific pieces on our clients’ "wish lists," we spend time together exploring and discovering new artists and works. OVR presentations ‘democratize' the works in the way they are displayed, with images of works presented at all the same scale online. It can be disorienting to look at art this way, but it also makes exploring the vast offerings of these fairs possible—and it’s easier on the feet than walking through a convention center for hours!
So much is missed from in-person fairs and we all look forward to returning to looking at art together and having real interaction with the works, artists, and our colleagues. In the meantime, giving yourself the time and space to lose yourself in these online fairs is still rewarding, especially if you allow yourself to be engaged, explore deeply, have fun, and let passion guide you.
Anton Kern Gallery, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Untitled, 2019, oil on canvas 150 x 150 cm., From Art | Basel OVR: Pioneers, March 2021