#and party because I think MIGUEL thinks if he reopens that would it’s a good chance it’ll finally make Gabriel ‘realise’ he’s just not

[fellhellion]

Gnawing on the way Miguel can shoulder the blame of working in Alchemax but shies away from openly dwelling on his guilt abt hurting Gabriel

[pigtailedgirl]

Cobra Kai LOVE

So I finally got to watch all of Cobra Kai after loving the first two free episodes on Youtube but not affording it or having access til Netflix.

Dad and I nostalgia tripped it together and it's so good and it was also a great little family thing to do for us, since we always watched the movies as a family and are missing Mom, and I cried (there were some moments in season 2 especially hard) and laughed and we both loved it and I can't wait for season 3.

What can you say about a show that picks up 30 years after a properties heyday and kills as a tie-in! That honours the themes, and even better the cheese and feelings of the originals. Be it kick-ass karate, 80s style and music, the over the top plotting, and the profound kinda searching for inner life peace mixed with silly karate moves or metaphors and longing for Dad guidance.

I absolutely adore Johnny, who is by no means a perfect person. He's a stunted functional alcoholic who reopens his best part of his life, he tragically peaked in high-school (Christ!), for the best intentioned reasons, not realizing until committing the same mistakes how toxic it was the first go round.

Daniel. Oh you sweet fucking it up-ward man. Every movie was Miyagi having to help you pull your hot head out of your own ass because you were desperate to earn inner acceptance through outer validation and he's not around to do it anymore and you sweet pea think you've got it figured out, that you can give it to kids or protect them from the bullying toxicity of the way that high-school and a loss of place moving to California and Cobra Kai did you in, but you just keep jumping from victim to projecting and anticipating victim-hood and responding against Miyagi's first lesson, learn karate so you don't have to use it to fight.

It's sad and beautiful that these two are twinned and stuck in their pasts. Man-children in their 50s still trying to grow up (And figure out technology in Johnny's case LOL) hurting their future generation.

The teen themes are great.

Teen Breakdown of S1 & S2

The beginning popular crowd being easy and simple bullies. Morphing in Season 2 as both Cobra Kai and Demetri, Robbie and Sam trade off with Hawk and Tory on are we the bullied or the bullies all at once. Free for all high-school fight!

Aisha and Miguel represent the honesty of strength of self and confidence in finding themselves and their voice in Cobra Kai.

Hawk and Demitri, of using a newfound self to bully or staying safe to play victim.

Robbie as the growth from getting respect and guidance from Miyagi karate and Daniel, being the truest student, to the heartbreaking reality it doesn't mean you still don't crave wanting to be declared ultimate right or winner and fuck yourself over with your past issues.

As Miguel does the twin tango with him in having innate respectability and good moral guidance, even passing it to Johnny, but slipping into loss at the karate finals, mentally giving into loss of morality being violent to show his strength and losing himself and his GF, and physically when he's hurt (please be just hurt) defending the good guidance of mercy and stopping fighting.

But yeah, I could do essays on all the teens.

Then there's Sam, Daniel 's daughter. Robbie's mirror student and Aisha should be her foil but I fear based on a rumour and the way of season 2, they went with the easier and show attractive rival GF Tory.  Samantha Larusso is a problem. She is marked good, to be going the way of Robbie to being the child of the former protagonist that leads into a creation of harmony among the two karate's and teachers/families/philosophies. Instead despite the show sympathizing and trying to identify with her as that role, she's straight up a cause of strife and exhibits neither the good traits of Miyagi karate, or a inner self confident bravado of Cobra Kai. She's almost the bizzaro evil version of a teen Ali, and that guy from the third movie. She thinks she's both victim and bad ass and she's just someone who needs a good dose of someone sitting her down to tell her she's owed or earned either status. And Aisha, the friend she wasted for faux status as a popular pretty girl, as well as her adult parents letting her currently skate responsibilities of teenage dramas and violence, and her suitors, whom she waffles unhealthy betwixt so that they all suffer, are the ones to do it. She doesn't need her ass kicked by Tory, who is a one note character, she needs her mindset toggled by realizing her self-wants aren't priority. Basically grow up, and outta the me mentality.

What's fabulous is the show honoring it's roots in teen drama and life so it's not like the drama is too over the top. How their world revolves around them and their perception of the importance of their wants. Romance. Party. Popularity. Identity.

Leading to the teenage version of power posturing. Bullying. (Which even the adults haven't mastered escape from.)

The high-school pettiness and importance of structure and status and coolness. The different norms of today versus the 80's that are still about wealth, the right looks (cultural or physical), and violence being the forever enforcer. Of course kids will break down along the lines of Cobra Kai and Miyagi karate. Brute correctness or passive acceptance?

Seeking strength and refusing to accept weakness of self builds confidence. Using that strength to physically fight in anything but defense brings a cycle of conflict and violence.

Neither the past nor the present generation ignore the other big life influence of the age. There you have the Daddy or parental abandonment angles.

Johnny's step dad failed him in absentee. Kreese used his position as teacher to abuse him. Johnny failed his kid in absentee. Johnny tries to uses his teacher position with Miguel to fix all these errors. Meanwhile Daniel is over there in the opposite corner with lost his father figure, and then Miyagi taught him respect and guidance and Daniel regained one and clung, and now Daniel is a lost or losing father figure to his own son and daughter, the family unit does not respect him or seek his guide. So he entwines his then teaching Sam and Robbie as a fix.

But does karate fix this shit?

So all these kids they drag in are confounded by the lessons because a step would be stop you yokels and talk or acknowledge what really happened in high-school and with All Valley and Ali and Kreese and Miyagi. And move on.

You won 30 years ago Daniel. Miyagi was a great old man and your teacher and like a Dad but you never had to be the best or have the girl to earn him. You got bullied by Kreese & co, were devalued because you weren't rich or popular in high-school. Some people were dicks. Or worse. Tell the world. You don't have to beat them now and forever to hold to knowing that. Be a happy car salesman and focus on your own kids.

Johnny, 30 years have passed my dude. You were okay with defeat when you gave Daniel that trophy and said he was all right. Cling to that guy, not the jerk with a shitty teacher/Dad, pining for a girl you were in conflict with. And stop reliving the mindset you were the loser in those things ending. You missed out on living with your losses and celebrating the moments between and after. Find a GF. Reconcile with your biological son. Admire and mentor your students of now. Take a lesson from your Miguel and be like the young man you clearly are learning from. You will never be a loser to this kid, you will always be the bad ass who defended him.

Also also, I hilariously crack-ship Daniel/Johnny as a love hate bromance. HEAD GAMES vid it!!

Also, Daniel's wife is a treasure with her snark on the childishness of this karate feud. She the MVP.

And I legit cried with my Dad and the Miyagi grave visit. At the Tommy scenes. At the Miguel voicemail. At the Mrs. Larusso Dad on my shoulder scene.

And you can't not laugh at dick billboard.

[gadgetsrevv]

Transfer news LIVE: Barcelona fury over Neymar, two Man Utd targets, Liverpool scouting | Football | Sport

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip

Wednesday, September 4

Barcelona stars are unhappy about the failure to sign Neymar this summer

Inter Milan are interested in prising Christian Eriksen away from Tottenham

Liverpool scouts are tracking Trabzonspor’s young goalkeeper Ugurcan Cakir

Manchester United are reportedly eyeing deals for Christian Eriksen and Jan Oblak

Top Man Utd target

Manchester United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had no doubt who his first choice target was during the recent summer transfer window.

Forbes reckon the Norwegian was insistent he wanted Harry Maguire to be the man to come in and shore up his defence.

Solskjaer’s stance came after United chiefs had drawn up a short list of potential acquisitions to bolster their backline.

Solskjaer ultimately got his man as United paid Leicester a world-record fee of £80m to get Maguire on board.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Christian Eriksen to Inter Milan plot

Inter Milan are understood to have set their sights on Christian Eriksen as the Tottenham playmaker’s contract stand-off rumbles on.

Eriksen was angling for a a move this summer but it failed to materialise and he now has just 10 months to run on his Spurs deal.

Inter are keeping tabs on his situation ahead of the January transfer window and could launch a raid to prise him away if his future is not resolved.

Inter manager Antonio Conte is a big fan of Eriksen and would love to snatch the Dane from the grasp of Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Chelsea star in demand

Chelsea winger Willian has made his way on to Juventus’ wish list as the Serie A giants look to repeat their record of making savvy signings.

The wideman has less than a year left to run on his Chelsea contract and will be free to speak to foreign clubs about a move in January.

Juventus have cast their eye towards Willian having previously snapped up Aaron Ramsey and Emre Can when their deals at Arsenal and Liverpool expired.

Frank Lampard is keen to keep Willian at Chelsea but talks over a prospective new two-year contract are yet to be opened.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Bruno Fernandes decision

Manchester United will reportedly not be moving for Sporting Lisbon star Bruno Fernandes when the transfer window reopens in January.

The Portugal international was heavily linked with a move to Old Trafford during the summer window but, ultimately, chose to stay in his home country.

And The Sun say United have no interest in moving for the 24-year-old this winter.

It is claimed that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side have ‘backed off’ because they feel Real may try to sign him instead.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Lucas Moura offered

Barcelona were offered the the chance to sign Tottenham forward Lucas Moura.

Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo claim the Brazilian could have made the switch on Monday’s European transfer deadline day.

But the two parties were unable to agree on a fee for the 27-year-old international, with Spurs asking for £45million.

Moura featured in the first three Premier League fixtures of the season – but was benched for Sunday’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Christian Eriksen battle

Atletico Madrid are still interested in signing Tottenham star Christian Eriksen.

The Dane has entered the final year of his contract in north London and appears destined to leave Spurs either in January or at the end of the 2019/2020 campaign.

Manchester United, Inter Milan, Barcelona and Real Madrid have all been tipped to launch offers for the 27-year-old.

But Spanish publication AS claim Diego Simeone’s side want to join Kieran Trippier at the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Double sale

Juventus duo Mario Mandzukic and Emre Can will be available in January.

Both Can and Mandzukic were sensationally left out of Maurizio Sarri’s 2019/2020 Champions League squad – with the former Liverpool man absolutely livid.

“It was very shocking for me because last week I was told and promised something else,” Can said. “Yesterday I got a call from the coach, in which he told me in less than a minute and without explanation that I was not in the squad. I can not explain it, nobody has given me a reason until now.

“Me and my agent had talks with other clubs, Paris [Saint-Germain] as well. After discussions with Juventus, we decided to stay with the club. A condition was to play in the Champions League, and that was what I was promised. Yesterday it was said – one day after the transfer period ended – that I’m not in. It just makes me angry how they’ve dealt with me.”

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Players feel cheated

Barcelona players feel “cheated” after the club’s transfer dealings.

According to Spanish newspaper Sport, Barcelona’s talented dressing room were desperate to see Neymar back at the Nou Camp.

And it’s even claimed some of them made direct requests to president Josep Maria Bartomeu to get the deal sorted.

Sport say Ernesto Valverde’s side are upset that Neymar wasn’t signed from Paris Saint-Germain and think the club were never serious about his signature.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Tiemoue Bakayoko: It’s not a step back

Chelsea midfielder Tiemoue Bakayoko has defended his decision to return to Monaco.

The 25-year-old midfielder left the Ligue 1 side for Stamford Bridge for £40million in 2017 – but having struggled to adapt to Premier League life – he’s returned on loan for the remainder of the season.

“There was a good opportunity to come back here in a very good project,” Bakayoko said. “Lots of people will perhaps say that I am taking a step back by coming to Monaco but I see it differently.

“My two experiences abroad allowed me to play a lot, contrary to what a lot of people have said. My season in Milan brought me a lot in terms of new avenues of football and professionalism. I have taken a lot of positive things away from it.”

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Late Leeds bid

Rangers winger Ryan Kent was close to joining Leeds, but their £4.5million bid for the player was rebuffed by the Reds close to the closure of the window last month.

As reported by the Liverpool Echo, Liverpool instead agreed to a £7.5million fee that has seen Kent swap Merseyside for Glasgow.

Leeds will have hoped that a possible transfer would have boosted their chances of promotion from the Championship.

But this was not to be, with Leeds settling on boosting their attacking ranks with Eddie Nketiah, Helder Costa, Jack Clarke – returning on loan from Tottenham – and Jack Harrison all on loan.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Pedri agreement

Barcelona could pay upwards of £22million for Las Palmas teenager Pedri.

The Catalan giants had a fairly quiet end to the transfer window but did manage to secure the arrival of highly-rated 16-year-old Pedri.

Pedri, who has started three fixtures this season, will remain with the Spanish second-tier side until July 2020.

Barcelona will pay an initial £5.8million at the end of the campaign but that figure could grow to £22.5m with future performance-related add-ons, claim Marca.

“The figure could go up to 25 million euros in the coming years,” Las Palmas president Miguel Angel Rodriguez explained. “The three big teams in Spain and a foreign club, who offered nine million euros.”

Las Palmas have retained a 15 per cent sell-on fee and Sport claim Pedri already has a £361m release clause in his contract.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Chris Smalling future

Chris Smalling could join Roma on a permanent basis.

The Manchester United centre-back joined the Serie A side on a season-long loan having fallen down the pecking order at Old Trafford.

And the agent who helped arrange the loan, Giulio Meozzi, suggested Roma could be his home for the foreseeable future.

Meozzi told Tuttomercato: “An important transfer There is a possibility of making a dry loan, with the option to keep for next year and that depends on his performances.”

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

No go Zinchenko

Juventus made a deadline day approach for Manchester City left-back Oleksandr Zinchenko.

The European transfer window closed on Monday and the Italian giants attempted to get a last-moment deal over the line, according to Italian website Calciomercato.

Zinchenko has been a mainstay under Pep Guardiola this campaign – starting all four of City’s Premier League fixtures.

And Pep reportedly blocked the approach for City’s 22-year-old talent.

Gunners should have signed…

Arsenal should have signed Manchester City midfielder Fabian Delph during the summer transfer window.

That’s according to Gunners legend Paul Merson, who believes the England international is better than Granit Xhaka, Mattéo Guendouzi and Lucas Torreira.

“I look at him and wonder why Arsenal didn’t sign him,” he told Sky Sports. “He is better than the midfield three that played against Tottenham.

“He could have played at left back instead of Kolasinac on Sunday. I am a big fan of Delph. He can play in certain positions and is an excellent signing for Everton.”

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Neymar to Real Madrid

Real Madrid will sign Neymar in the next four months.

That’s according to Santos president Jose Carlos Peres, whose side could make an estimated £6million from their sell-on clause if PSG approve a £153m deal.

Barcelona were strong favourites to bring the Brazilian superstar back to the Nou Camp – two years after joining PSG for £200million.

However, Peres believes it’s Zinedine Zidane’s Galacticos who’ll snap up the 27-year-old.

“(The money) will still come! He will go to Real Madrid, if not now, it will be at the end of the year,” Peres told Brazilian outlet Globoesporte.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Liverpool scout Ugurcan Cakir

Liverpool are tracking Trabzonspor goalkeeper Ugurcan Cakir.

The Daily Mail claim Liverpool scouts were in attendance to watch the stopper during a 1-1 Super Lig draw against Fenerbahce on Sunday.

Cakir, 23, earned his debut for Turkey’s senior side back in May, in a friendly against Greece.

And it’s believed that Jurgen Klopp’s side will have to pay upwards of £14million to bring him to Anfield.

Transfer news LIVE | Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the latest rumours and gossip (Image: GETTY)

Man Utd double raid

Manchester United are reportedly eyeing deals for Christian Eriksen and Jan Oblak.

The Red Devils signed Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Harry Maguire and Daniel James for a combined £145million during the summer transfer window.

But various reports claim Ed Woodward and co are already planning future deals.

Spanish publication Diaro AS claim Atletico Madrid goalkeeper Oblak, who has an £108m release clause, is United’s primary candidate to replace David de Gea.

The Daily Mail also claim that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side have decided to bid for £70m-rated Tottenham playmaker Eriksen in January.

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[brihana25]

I wish Robby hadn’t been there, too. My first reaction when they walked in and Johnny saw him was, “No! Now it’s all gone again!” But Robby wasn’t there for a lesson. He was there to tell Daniel the truth. He’d just watched what happened between Miguel and Sam over her keeping a secret from Daniel, and maybe during the drive to the party, she’d told him what had happened between Johnny and Daniel for the same reason.

He wanted to tell Daniel the truth before everything blew up in their faces. He never got the chance.

Neither Ali nor Robby’s connection with Daniel was his fault. He met a pretty girl who obviously liked him, too. He didn’t find out Johnny was her ex-boyfriend until two days later. That night on the beach, Johnny was just a guy who tore down a hill on a motorcycle and started pushing her around, emotionally if not physically, and broke her radio. Daniel thought was defending and protecting her. That’s pretty normal for a fifteen-year-old kid.

He met a scared, broken, fatherless kid who needed his help. He had no idea who the kid’s father was, though Robby had obviously told him he wasn’t around. To him, because he didn’t know about the drugs and the crimes he’d been involved with, Robby was him. Daniel was a scared, broken, fatherless boy, and when he needed someone, Mr. Miyagi saved him. He just wanted to do the same for someone else.

In both of those situations, Daniel was trying to do the right thing. Johnny sees it as Daniel trying to steal his life, over and over, but that’s not why he’s doing it. So, yes, Johnny does need to sit down a think for a while, and he needs to realize that Ali had moved on, and wasn’t it good that she found a decent person who loved her to do it with? And he needs to realize the Robby needs a father, and he’s getting what Johnny was never able to give him. And Daniel obviously loves him. Accepting both of those facts will go a long way to letting Johnny step out of that shadow.

BUT

Daniel needs to do the same thing. Johnny didn’t fight him on the beach that night “just because.” He didn’t pick him at random to torment, and I’m sure he never imagined that things would escalate to the point of attempted murder. They did, sure. But with the exception of the soccer tryouts, every attack was in response to something Daniel did. The bike attack wasn’t just about him stepping into the dojo, but also the infamous blueberry pie incident. The Halloween beating was because Daniel turned a hose on him.

And as an adult, Daniel needs to realize that Johnny’s motivations, almost without exception, have nothing to do with him. He didn’t reopen the CK to upset Daniel; he did it to save himself and Miguel. He didn’t fight the ban to spite Daniel. How could he? He had no idea Daniel was the reason it existed or that he was on the board. He did it to give his kids and himself something to work for, so they’d have a chance to feel what he felt when he won his two titles.

I think they’re playing with this brilliantly. We saw hints of it all through the movies, and now, it can’t be ignored.

Johnny has it in him to *be* Daniel. He can be the good guy. He can care more about others than himself. We’ve seen it! And he may have his issues with Robby, but it can’t even be argued that he doesn’t love Miguel. He cried the night he carried the boy home to his mother. He was willing to abandon everything because he thought he’d gotten him hurt. He handed Daniel the trophy out of respect, because he’d earned it. The issue is that all of those “good guy” traits are the ones he tries to hide. He sees them as weak. He sees them as useless and worthless and something to be ashamed of. He’s believed that for so long, and he’s so afraid of being seen as “less than” for it that he’s fighting it.

And Daniel definitely has it in him to be Johnny. He can absolutely be the bad guy. We’ve seen that, too. KKIII was the most obvious reference to it. Yes, Terry screwed with his head so badly that he convinced him to torture himself, and yes, he brainwashed him into believing what he did, but that night at the club, Daniel *was* Johnny. He was Johnny on the beach, attacking without hesitation to defend someone he saw as “his,” even though she wasn’t. We’ve seen it this season. With the Zakkarian thing. With the All Valley board. The difference is Daniel knows just how close to the surface his “dark side” is and always has been. And he’s lost without Mr. Miyagi showing him how to fight it off.

So what they really hate about each other, I think, is themselves. They project everything they hate and fear about themselves on to each other, because it’s already there. But they each make it 100x worse than it really is.

Once they realize that, stop doing it and move past it, they’ll also find that there is no one else who understands them as well as they do each other. And that’s what I’m excited to see.

“History repeats itself” and in the last scene it seems as if Johnny feels he has lost people to Daniel way too many times. It hurts him to know that LaRusso will always be there to take the ones he loves the most, first his girlfriend, now his son. And it’s even harder when his loved ones would rather fight him defending Daniel than realize how much Johnny loves them. Communicating his feelings was always hard for him but knowing his background with his cruel and cold stepdad, that’s no surprise.

[lejokerblr-blog-blog]

As Art Galleries Reopen, Get Ready for a Very Different Experience

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The Harold Ancart show at David Zwirner, in Manhattan’s Chelsea.

Source: David Zwirner

  Source: David Zwirner

On Wednesday, Sept. 9, dealer David Zwirner inaugurated one of his major fall shows in New York, a presentation of new paintings by artist Harold Ancart.

    Before the Covid-19 era, Zwirner would have thrown his gallery open to hundreds of people and then invited a slightly smaller group—often upward of 40 or 50 collectors, friends of the artist, curators, and critics—to dinner at a restaurant.

        This time around. Zwirner hosted a dinner for Ancart’s show, “but it was Harold, just a couple of people who work in the gallery, and a few friends,” he says. “I think we were six people altogether at Altro Paradiso, outside on the street.”

      Welcome to the reopened New York gallery world, where dealers, collectors, and artists are still figuring out how to exist in an ecosystem that previously relied on crowds, dinners, and constant travel to sell art. 

    Every gallery is now open by appointment. Most will accept drop-ins if the space is under capacity. Beyond that, the logistics of doing business varies from gallery to gallery.

  “As far as New York goes, it’s a very opaque situation,” says dealer Marianne Boesky, whose namesake Chelsea gallery will reopen with a show of paintings by artist Gina Beavers on Sept. 15. “Everyone is doing their own thing. That’s the bottom line: There’s no consensus.”

Gina Beavers, Passo a Passo (2020).

Source: Marianne Boesky Gallery

No More Frenzied Openings ...

Along with everyone else, Boesky closed her gallery in March. Now, as she begins her fall program, one half of her gallery is open to the public, and visitors can book slots through online appointments. (Ten people will be allowed in, through half-hour intervals. “We’re not going to be doing openings in the traditional sense,” she says. “It’s hard, because if you can’t get more than 10 to 20 people together, you’re not going to have that buzz—that energy and excitement.”

To compensate, Boesky says she’s working on a digital alternative that recreates the immediacy and personality of a live opening.

  “You can enter the space, see the works in three dimensions, and can say, ‘Is Kelly around? Is Mary around? I want to chat with them,’ and a gallery director will be there and walk you through the show,” she says. “The tech isn’t quite there yet, but we’re working on it.”

Mary Weatherford’s Meeting in the Forest (2019), part of Hauser & Wirth's "Artists for New York" show.

Photographer: Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy the artist, David Kordansky Gallery and Gagosian 

Hauser & Wirth was set to inaugurate its new Annabelle Selldorf-designed 36,000-square-foot gallery on Manhattan’s 22nd Street in May. “Obviously, that couldn’t happen,” says gallery co-President Marc Payot.

For its delayed opening in its new space, the gallery has put together a benefit exhibition, “Artists for New York,” comprising art donated from artists. The proceeds will go to 14 not-for-profit arts organizations across the city. “We’re not doing a party, we’re not doing a press event—nothing,” Payot says. “It’s the opposite of an event-driven opening.”

The large gatherings that animated the art world will be missed, dealers say, but they stress that openings have a minimal impact on sales. “It’s a celebration of creativity and an artist having worked hard,” says Payot. “Does it generate energy, and does this maybe then lead to some sales? Possibly, but it’s not that linear.”

Eileen Quinlan and Cheyney Thompson’s show, Displacements and Dead Trees, is at Miguel Abreu gallery.

Source: Miguel Abreu Gallery

Lower East Side dealer Miguel Abreu is going even further. Dinners “lost their utility” long ago, he says. “Collectors didn’t want to go to them anymore. They were sick of them; they were invited to 60 a month. Any pleasure in it was stripped away,” he continues. “At our openings in the last few years, there were fewer and fewer collectors, it was all artists and friends.” (For pair of openings on Sept. 10, Abreu invited anyone who attended to go to a nearby park for tacos.)

… For Now

“One of the most beautiful openings I can remember happened in January for Noah Davis, a young artist who passed away very early,” says Zwirner. “It was his first major show in New York, and it was endlessly exciting to the extent that the catalogue sold out, and we had to reprint it.”

  Now, he says, “you do much better with artists where the audience is already strong. It’s hard to introduce brand-new work that people aren’t familiar with, because you have a limit on how [interest in] the work can spread at this moment.”

Zwirner says he hasn’t made any changes to his exhibition schedule, for which there’s already a significant, Covid-19-related backlog. “We haven’t adjusted our program, other than that we’re showing everyone we couldn’t show for the last six months,” he says. “The rescheduling has been a little bit of a nightmare to make sure you can get everyone on deck.”

  The real issue, he says, is that “we’re primarily a brick-and-mortar business. I never like to say it, but we’re part of the world of retail, where you come in and you want to experience the object.” When collectors have come through the door, he says, “everyone is wearing masks, and we have safety protocols, but we’ve actually stood in front of the artworks with clients, and sold them.”

Suzan Frecon’s show of oil paintings, at David Zwirner in New York.

Photographer: Maris Hutchinson

Openings, Zwirner continues, are part of that in-person experience. “It’s a beautiful tradition: You celebrate the artist, you see friends, you go gallery-hopping. It’s so New York, it’s so quintessential, and I want it to come back.”

Boesky, too, says she wants to return to a world of gallery dinners—but old-school dinners, like when I opened in 1996,” she says. “I would just cook them, and then it became this whole other animal: seated dinners that cost $50,000. I don’t enjoy going to a lot of those. It just feels obligatory.”

Goodbye to All That

Dealers uniformly agree that things shouldn’t go back to the way they were. 

“Art was being absorbed by this relentless activity” of the art world circuit, Abreu says. “It was stripped of its power of expression—to reach people and engage people—and the result was that everybody had been forced into the position of shopping and not collecting anymore.”

Gina Beavers's Painting Lee Bontecou's 'Untitled 1967' on my cheek (2020).

Source: Marianne Boesky Gallery

Even Zwirner and Payot, each helming one of the largest galleries in the world, say galleries needed to change.

  “We’ll all run our business differently,” says Zwirner. Everything from the obvious—a plexiglass divider at the reception desk, appointments scheduled in advance, and galleries leaning even more heavily than before on digital “previews” of shows sent out to clients—to how many art fairs Zwirner will attend every year is being reconsidered. “There was almost a hysteria in the art world to be everywhere at all times.” That, he says “needs to be rethought.” 

Payot agrees that travel particularly needs to be scaled back. “This crisis has made us think of everything differently,” he says. “The relationship between digital and physical [sales], how much do we actually need in terms of events and openings, and how much do we actually need to travel?”

  Boesky is reconfiguring about one-half of her gallery as semi-private exhibition spaces. “Does it make sense for me to have a 15,000-square-foot public exhibition space?” she asks rhetorically. “It doesn’t, because we can’t have a gathering of 500 people for an opening.”

The forced reset, Boesky continues, has compelled her to take a step back to reconsider what’s good for her, her artists, and her staff.

“The life we lived prior was not reasonable, it was insane,” she says. “I’m looking forward to a new normal—and not chasing my tail 24/7.”

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September 14, 2020, 5:20 AM EDT

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Record-breaking surge in Covid cases spells trouble for South Florida’s hotel market

From left: The Fontainebleau Miami Beach, Shore Club and Clevelander South Beach

Jeffrey Soffer’s iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach was among the first of the city’s hotels to reopen on June 1, after the majority were shut down for the entire month of May.

The sponsors of the 1,500-room oceanfront resort — whose hallways have been graced by Elvis Presley, Lucille Ball, and more recently, Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian West — spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the reopening.

Jeffrey Soffer, CEO of Fontainebleau Development

Preparations included the purchase of electrostatic sprayers, thermometers and hand sanitizer dispensers throughout the property, as well as training employees in the latest health and safety protocols. And as it prepared to reopen its doors, the luxury hotel planned to hire 500 employees back in the first couple weeks, adding more as occupancy returned.

“We’re cautiously optimistic that people are making reservations,” Philip Goldfarb, president and CEO of the hospitality division of Soffer’s Fontainebleau Development, said at the time.

But of the more than 2,000 employees who were temporarily laid off due to the pandemic, the Fontainebleau ended up bringing back just 774 by July. About 1,300 workers were recently provided with a separation notice, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification that cited the effects of ongoing restrictions on travel and large gatherings, as well as the hotel’s low occupancy.

At the same time, a $975 million CMBS loan backing the resort is stuck in special servicing, a situation the hotel’s owners say occured because they are seeking modifications to the loan.

The Fontainebleau is not alone.

“No hotel can operate on less than 20 percent occupancy. The numbers don’t work.”

Suzanne Amaducci-Adams, Bilzin Sumberg

After Florida began to lift its stay-at-home orders, positive cases of Covid-19 skyrocketed. As of July 13, following a daily record for the U.S. with 15,300 cases reported in 24 hours, there have been more than 282,000 cases and 4,277 deaths documented in the state.

That, coupled with closures of the beaches and countywide curfews, led to already low occupancy rates taking another hit. Many hotels — banking on being sold out for the 4th of July weekend — ended up with significant cancellations.

The start-and-stop of the market spells trouble for South Florida’s hotels, with distressed sales expected to occur later this year. That’s reflective of an even bigger problem for the state’s business activity and real estate markets. Since the pandemic began, close to 3 million people in Florida have reportedly filed for unemployment, with the accommodation and food services industry seeing the highest number of jobless claims.

Suzanne Amaducci-Adams, Bilzin Sumberg

“Until we have a steady stream of income from travelers, the hotels are not going to be able to function properly and not be able to meet their obligations,” said Suzanne Amaducci-Adams, a partner and head of real estate at Bilzin Sumberg, a major commercial law firm based in Miami.

“No hotel can operate on less than 20 percent occupancy,” she added. “The numbers don’t work.”

Survival tactics

Dozens of hotels are in a similar situation as the Fontainebleau and tens of thousands of hospitality workers have lost their jobs in South Florida alone.

The Trump Organization, for example, laid off nearly 800 employees in March, including many at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort and club in Palm Beach. Alan Lieberman’s South Beach Hotel Group and the Loews Hotel each laid off more than 700 employees.

And with air travel, occupancy and room rates still low, the layoffs will likely last longer than originally anticipated.

Occupancy among South Florida’s hotels that haven’t shut down completely exceeded 30 percent during the week of July 4, according to data from the hotel research firm STR. But while that’s an increase from earlier in the pandemic, it marks a 54 percent annual decline.

The average daily rate was $124, a 24 percent drop from the same week last year, and revenue per available room was $42, down 65 percent year over year, per STR.

A majority of hotels secured loan deferments or concessions that were set to expire by July, and a good chunk of the high season was lost to coronavirus. Like most commercial real estate, any hotel sales that were in the pipeline were either canceled or indefinitely placed on hold.

Before the pandemic, 2020 was supposed to be a banner year for South Florida’s hotels — after the market faced setbacks from the Zika outbreak in 2016 and Hurricane Irma in 2017.

Super Bowl LIV (Getty)

Super Bowl LIV, which Miami hosted in early February, was a boon for local hotels. That weekend, the average daily rate increased almost 150 percent year-over-year, with occupancy rising above 90 percent. Following that, hotels had other events to look forward to: 2020’s Ultra Music Festival in March, the Miami Open in April, and weeks of Spring Break.

“Most hotels were having sort of the best year in five or six years,” said Max Comess, managing director of Hodges Ward Elliott’s Miami office. But all of the big events lined up for the spring were eventually canceled.

Hotel owners and operators typically budget a loss for the slow season, Comess noted, but with the high season cut short, it’s almost impossible to say which hotels will make it through the rest of the year.

“No one knows when the market will really start to bounce back without a vaccine for Covid-19 and a return of consumer confidence in travel,” he added. “Business travel is non-existent, and most Americans are now vacationing in areas they can drive to.”

After being shut down on March 23, Florida’s hotels were allowed to reopen beginning June 1. But many owners are waiting until August or September to start welcoming guests, while others continue to delay their opening dates due to increased restrictions and low demand.

Among those that are still closed are the Standard Spa Miami Beach, the JW Marriott Marquis Miami, Four Seasons Hotel Miami, the Shore Club, the Gale South Beach, and Novotel Miami Brickell, according to their websites.

The Clevelander South Beach (Getty)

The Clevelander South Beach, a popular party hotel on Ocean Drive, voluntarily closed its doors in July. A notice posted on its website said it was closed until further notice “due to public health concerns” caused by Covid-19.

“Some hotel owners are opting to stay closed,” Amaducci-Adams said. “Hotel owners have never really been faced with that horrible decision before.”

A deal drought

Some big deals that were in the works prior to the pandemic are also on ice.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Hotels — an offshoot of the billionaire entrepreneur’s Virgin Group — had prepared a 46-page offering package for the Shore Club in South Beach, a self-described “Art Deco labyrinth of gardens and alcoves” on Collins Avenue.

Richard Branson

The hotel group had been searching for a flagship property in Miami Beach for years, and seemed to have found it in the 309-room Shore Club owned by Ziel Feldman’s HFZ Capital Group.

Then the pandemic hit.

“Once institutional lenders start saying no, they’re all going to start saying no.”

Luis Flores, Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr

Virgin was seeking to acquire and redevelop the Shore Club for roughly $335 million. The proposal, obtained by The Real Deal, included a purchase price of $235 million and upgrades that would cost an additional $100 million.

HFZ acquired the hotel in late 2013, with plans to redevelop the historic property into luxury condominiums, but canceled plans three years ago and returned buyers’ deposits due to the slow condo market.

Virgin was aiming to close on the property in the first quarter of 2020, break ground a year later, and open as early as August 2022. But the deal has been tabled indefinitely, as the market overall remains on hold.

Barry Sternlicht, Starwood Capital Group

What happened with the Shore Club is telling for other significant hotel deals in the works prior to the pandemic, in major cities across the country. Some investors, including Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group, are on the hunt for deeply discounted hotels.

“We have a pretty deep background in hotels, and I’m willing to buy cheap real estate in the hotel space because I believe in the asset class,” Sternlihct told TRD in a May interview. “I think I know what we can do with them.”

But Miguel Pinto, president and broker of Apex Capital Realty, said for investors who need access to bank financing, even buying distressed hotel assets could be a challenge.

“Banks, for the most part, don’t want to touch hotels today,” he said. “It’s a big risk for them to have hotels in their portfolio — especially at high loan-to-value ratios.

“Without the lending from banks, hotel transactions tend to be very difficult,” he added.

“Completely frozen”

Lenders are unsure of when the market will return and how to value properties.

International and business travel are non-existent, domestic travel is limited, and the cruise line industry, which feeds hotels, is still shut down.

As a result, hotels are “not exactly the most attractive lending asset class right now,” said J.C. de Ona, president of Centennial Bank’s Southeast Florida division. “How do you underwrite a hotel not knowing when they’re going to get profitable right now?”

And the timeline for a recovery is to be determined. The weekend of July 4th was expected to be a “turning point,” Ona said, but once the beaches were closed, hotel owners saw cancellations left and right.

“Are they going to get back to normal? Yes, but it could take a couple of years,” he noted. “At what point do banks get comfortable that the environment is getting better? That’s the unknown.”

Centennial isn’t actively looking to lend on any hotel deals in South Florida, though de Ona said the bank wouldn’t rule it out entirely — depending on the borrower.

Boaz Ashbel, Aztec Group

Boaz Ashbel, managing director of the Miami-based debt brokerage Aztec Group, said the lending market is “completely frozen.”

“Most lenders right now are evaluating every single hotel loan they have, trying to determine what kind of risk they have and how to eliminate it,” he said.

Just a small handful of non-traditional lenders will offer “very high-priced loans” that are designed to be more like bridge and short-term loans “to buy enough time to allow a borrower to get over the pandemic,” Ashbel added.

Most loan agreements include a measuring point to ensure hotels are producing enough income to cover the debt service, said attorney Luis Flores of the law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr.

If properties are barely covering their mortgage payments, it could trigger a higher interest rate. Lenders could start to foreclose if the hotel isn’t generating enough money.

“At some point, that breathing room is going to expire and the water is going to boil over,” Flores added. “Once institutional lenders start saying no, they’re all going to start saying no. It will be like a brush fire, it will start to spread very quickly.”

Desperate times

Borrowers with securitized commercial mortgages will likely be the first to default, according to several industry sources.

CMBS loans are typically hardest to renegotiate and hotels dependent on large groups and conventions could take the largest time to recover, Ashbel said.

That could be especially true for Soffer’s Fontainebleau, the largest hotel in Miami-Dade, known for hosting conventions and star-studded concerts.

Typically, about 50 percent of the Fontainebleau’s business comes from group bookings and conventions; leisure travelers take up the other half.

And the hotel’s nearly $1 billion CMBS loan is the largest to go into special servicing in South Florida. Though special servicing is usually triggered by two missed payments, the hotel is on up to speed on its debt service, according to Trepp.

“We’re still working through [loan] modifications,” Brett Mufson, president of Fontainebleau Development, told TRD in July. “We remain in compliance and are not in default.”

The Fontainebleau Miami Beach

There’s a big gap between Fontainebleau’s loan and the next CMBS loan on a South Florida hotel to go into special servicing: the nearly $114 million mortgage backing the Grand Beach Hotel.

The top five CMBS hotel loans in special servicing, per Trepp, are for a variety of properties throughout Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, and no hotel owner is immune, industry sources say.

Real estate investment banking firm Lotus Capital Partners, led by founder and CEO Faisal Ashraf, is working on behalf of lenders on debt restructurings with several hotel owners. That includes reallocating furniture, fixtures, and equipment reserves to make their debt payments and arranging forbearance agreements, Ashraf said.

“Large hotels will be very slow to come out of the gate or be fundamentally changed forever,” Ashraf said. “I think the second round of forbearances is when the claws come out and it could coincide with the lifting of all of these moratoriums.”

Once lender concessions run out, many hotel owners will be forced to spend more of their own capital, sell their debt, or sell their properties.

Most owners aren’t yet desperate, but some “will be forced to make decisions based on their liquidity situation,” said Scott Berman, a principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who leads the hospitality and leisure practice for the firm.

“Cash is king and liquidity is essential,” Berman added.

Publicly, many owners have been holding firm, expressing confidence that the market will bounce back in a matter of time. But, behind closed doors, some are also sizing up their options should that take longer than they hope.

“We have knowledge of many hotels [where] the owners want out,” said Pinto of Apex Capital. “You won’t see them hit the market for now, but we are getting calls from the owners to bring them offers. They want out.”

The post Record-breaking surge in Covid cases spells trouble for South Florida’s hotel market appeared first on The Real Deal Miami.

from The Real Deal Miami & Miami Florida Real Estate & Housing News | & Curbed Miami - All https://therealdeal.com/miami/2020/07/20/record-breaking-surge-in-covid-cases-spells-trouble-for-south-floridas-hotel-market/ via IFTTT

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As Art Galleries Reopen, Get Ready for a Very Different Experience

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The Harold Ancart show at David Zwirner, in Manhattan’s Chelsea.

Source: David Zwirner

  Source: David Zwirner

On Wednesday, Sept. 9, dealer David Zwirner inaugurated one of his major fall shows in New York, a presentation of new paintings by artist Harold Ancart.

    Before the Covid-19 era, Zwirner would have thrown his gallery open to hundreds of people and then invited a slightly smaller group—often upward of 40 or 50 collectors, friends of the artist, curators, and critics—to dinner at a restaurant.

        This time around. Zwirner hosted a dinner for Ancart’s show, “but it was Harold, just a couple of people who work in the gallery, and a few friends,” he says. “I think we were six people altogether at Altro Paradiso, outside on the street.”

      Welcome to the reopened New York gallery world, where dealers, collectors, and artists are still figuring out how to exist in an ecosystem that previously relied on crowds, dinners, and constant travel to sell art. 

    Every gallery is now open by appointment. Most will accept drop-ins if the space is under capacity. Beyond that, the logistics of doing business varies from gallery to gallery.

  “As far as New York goes, it’s a very opaque situation,” says dealer Marianne Boesky, whose namesake Chelsea gallery will reopen with a show of paintings by artist Gina Beavers on Sept. 15. “Everyone is doing their own thing. That’s the bottom line: There’s no consensus.”

Gina Beavers, Passo a Passo (2020).

Source: Marianne Boesky Gallery

No More Frenzied Openings ...

Along with everyone else, Boesky closed her gallery in March. Now, as she begins her fall program, one half of her gallery is open to the public, and visitors can book slots through online appointments. (Ten people will be allowed in, through half-hour intervals. “We’re not going to be doing openings in the traditional sense,” she says. “It’s hard, because if you can’t get more than 10 to 20 people together, you’re not going to have that buzz—that energy and excitement.”

To compensate, Boesky says she’s working on a digital alternative that recreates the immediacy and personality of a live opening.

  “You can enter the space, see the works in three dimensions, and can say, ‘Is Kelly around? Is Mary around? I want to chat with them,’ and a gallery director will be there and walk you through the show,” she says. “The tech isn’t quite there yet, but we’re working on it.”

Mary Weatherford’s Meeting in the Forest (2019), part of Hauser & Wirth's "Artists for New York" show.

Photographer: Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy the artist, David Kordansky Gallery and Gagosian 

Hauser & Wirth was set to inaugurate its new Annabelle Selldorf-designed 36,000-square-foot gallery on Manhattan’s 22nd Street in May. “Obviously, that couldn’t happen,” says gallery co-President Marc Payot.

For its delayed opening in its new space, the gallery has put together a benefit exhibition, “Artists for New York,” comprising art donated from artists. The proceeds will go to 14 not-for-profit arts organizations across the city. “We’re not doing a party, we’re not doing a press event—nothing,” Payot says. “It’s the opposite of an event-driven opening.”

The large gatherings that animated the art world will be missed, dealers say, but they stress that openings have a minimal impact on sales. “It’s a celebration of creativity and an artist having worked hard,” says Payot. “Does it generate energy, and does this maybe then lead to some sales? Possibly, but it’s not that linear.”

Eileen Quinlan and Cheyney Thompson’s show, Displacements and Dead Trees, is at Miguel Abreu gallery.

Source: Miguel Abreu Gallery

Lower East Side dealer Miguel Abreu is going even further. Dinners “lost their utility” long ago, he says. “Collectors didn’t want to go to them anymore. They were sick of them; they were invited to 60 a month. Any pleasure in it was stripped away,” he continues. “At our openings in the last few years, there were fewer and fewer collectors, it was all artists and friends.” (For pair of openings on Sept. 10, Abreu invited anyone who attended to go to a nearby park for tacos.)

… For Now

“One of the most beautiful openings I can remember happened in January for Noah Davis, a young artist who passed away very early,” says Zwirner. “It was his first major show in New York, and it was endlessly exciting to the extent that the catalogue sold out, and we had to reprint it.”

  Now, he says, “you do much better with artists where the audience is already strong. It’s hard to introduce brand-new work that people aren’t familiar with, because you have a limit on how [interest in] the work can spread at this moment.”

Zwirner says he hasn’t made any changes to his exhibition schedule, for which there’s already a significant, Covid-19-related backlog. “We haven’t adjusted our program, other than that we’re showing everyone we couldn’t show for the last six months,” he says. “The rescheduling has been a little bit of a nightmare to make sure you can get everyone on deck.”

  The real issue, he says, is that “we’re primarily a brick-and-mortar business. I never like to say it, but we’re part of the world of retail, where you come in and you want to experience the object.” When collectors have come through the door, he says, “everyone is wearing masks, and we have safety protocols, but we’ve actually stood in front of the artworks with clients, and sold them.”

Suzan Frecon’s show of oil paintings, at David Zwirner in New York.

Photographer: Maris Hutchinson

Openings, Zwirner continues, are part of that in-person experience. “It’s a beautiful tradition: You celebrate the artist, you see friends, you go gallery-hopping. It’s so New York, it’s so quintessential, and I want it to come back.”

Boesky, too, says she wants to return to a world of gallery dinners—but old-school dinners, like when I opened in 1996,” she says. “I would just cook them, and then it became this whole other animal: seated dinners that cost $50,000. I don’t enjoy going to a lot of those. It just feels obligatory.”

Goodbye to All That

Dealers uniformly agree that things shouldn’t go back to the way they were. 

“Art was being absorbed by this relentless activity” of the art world circuit, Abreu says. “It was stripped of its power of expression—to reach people and engage people—and the result was that everybody had been forced into the position of shopping and not collecting anymore.”

Gina Beavers's Painting Lee Bontecou's 'Untitled 1967' on my cheek (2020).

Source: Marianne Boesky Gallery

Even Zwirner and Payot, each helming one of the largest galleries in the world, say galleries needed to change.

  “We’ll all run our business differently,” says Zwirner. Everything from the obvious—a plexiglass divider at the reception desk, appointments scheduled in advance, and galleries leaning even more heavily than before on digital “previews” of shows sent out to clients—to how many art fairs Zwirner will attend every year is being reconsidered. “There was almost a hysteria in the art world to be everywhere at all times.” That, he says “needs to be rethought.” 

Payot agrees that travel particularly needs to be scaled back. “This crisis has made us think of everything differently,” he says. “The relationship between digital and physical [sales], how much do we actually need in terms of events and openings, and how much do we actually need to travel?”

  Boesky is reconfiguring about one-half of her gallery as semi-private exhibition spaces. “Does it make sense for me to have a 15,000-square-foot public exhibition space?” she asks rhetorically. “It doesn’t, because we can’t have a gathering of 500 people for an opening.”

The forced reset, Boesky continues, has compelled her to take a step back to reconsider what’s good for her, her artists, and her staff.

“The life we lived prior was not reasonable, it was insane,” she says. “I’m looking forward to a new normal—and not chasing my tail 24/7.”

Published on

September 14, 2020, 5:20 AM EDT

    Have a confidential tip for our reporters? GET IN TOUCH

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As Art Galleries Reopen, Get Ready for a Very Different Experience

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The Harold Ancart show at David Zwirner, in Manhattan’s Chelsea.

Source: David Zwirner

  Source: David Zwirner

On Wednesday, Sept. 9, dealer David Zwirner inaugurated one of his major fall shows in New York, a presentation of new paintings by artist Harold Ancart.

    Before the Covid-19 era, Zwirner would have thrown his gallery open to hundreds of people and then invited a slightly smaller group—often upward of 40 or 50 collectors, friends of the artist, curators, and critics—to dinner at a restaurant.

        This time around. Zwirner hosted a dinner for Ancart’s show, “but it was Harold, just a couple of people who work in the gallery, and a few friends,” he says. “I think we were six people altogether at Altro Paradiso, outside on the street.”

      Welcome to the reopened New York gallery world, where dealers, collectors, and artists are still figuring out how to exist in an ecosystem that previously relied on crowds, dinners, and constant travel to sell art. 

    Every gallery is now open by appointment. Most will accept drop-ins if the space is under capacity. Beyond that, the logistics of doing business varies from gallery to gallery.

  “As far as New York goes, it’s a very opaque situation,” says dealer Marianne Boesky, whose namesake Chelsea gallery will reopen with a show of paintings by artist Gina Beavers on Sept. 15. “Everyone is doing their own thing. That’s the bottom line: There’s no consensus.”

Gina Beavers, Passo a Passo (2020).

Source: Marianne Boesky Gallery

No More Frenzied Openings ...

Along with everyone else, Boesky closed her gallery in March. Now, as she begins her fall program, one half of her gallery is open to the public, and visitors can book slots through online appointments. (Ten people will be allowed in, through half-hour intervals. “We’re not going to be doing openings in the traditional sense,” she says. “It’s hard, because if you can’t get more than 10 to 20 people together, you’re not going to have that buzz—that energy and excitement.”

To compensate, Boesky says she’s working on a digital alternative that recreates the immediacy and personality of a live opening.

  “You can enter the space, see the works in three dimensions, and can say, ‘Is Kelly around? Is Mary around? I want to chat with them,’ and a gallery director will be there and walk you through the show,” she says. “The tech isn’t quite there yet, but we’re working on it.”

Mary Weatherford’s Meeting in the Forest (2019), part of Hauser & Wirth's "Artists for New York" show.

Photographer: Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy the artist, David Kordansky Gallery and Gagosian 

Hauser & Wirth was set to inaugurate its new Annabelle Selldorf-designed 36,000-square-foot gallery on Manhattan’s 22nd Street in May. “Obviously, that couldn’t happen,” says gallery co-President Marc Payot.

For its delayed opening in its new space, the gallery has put together a benefit exhibition, “Artists for New York,” comprising art donated from artists. The proceeds will go to 14 not-for-profit arts organizations across the city. “We’re not doing a party, we’re not doing a press event—nothing,” Payot says. “It’s the opposite of an event-driven opening.”

The large gatherings that animated the art world will be missed, dealers say, but they stress that openings have a minimal impact on sales. “It’s a celebration of creativity and an artist having worked hard,” says Payot. “Does it generate energy, and does this maybe then lead to some sales? Possibly, but it’s not that linear.”

Eileen Quinlan and Cheyney Thompson’s show, Displacements and Dead Trees, is at Miguel Abreu gallery.

Source: Miguel Abreu Gallery

Lower East Side dealer Miguel Abreu is going even further. Dinners “lost their utility” long ago, he says. “Collectors didn’t want to go to them anymore. They were sick of them; they were invited to 60 a month. Any pleasure in it was stripped away,” he continues. “At our openings in the last few years, there were fewer and fewer collectors, it was all artists and friends.” (For pair of openings on Sept. 10, Abreu invited anyone who attended to go to a nearby park for tacos.)

… For Now

“One of the most beautiful openings I can remember happened in January for Noah Davis, a young artist who passed away very early,” says Zwirner. “It was his first major show in New York, and it was endlessly exciting to the extent that the catalogue sold out, and we had to reprint it.”

  Now, he says, “you do much better with artists where the audience is already strong. It’s hard to introduce brand-new work that people aren’t familiar with, because you have a limit on how [interest in] the work can spread at this moment.”

Zwirner says he hasn’t made any changes to his exhibition schedule, for which there’s already a significant, Covid-19-related backlog. “We haven’t adjusted our program, other than that we’re showing everyone we couldn’t show for the last six months,” he says. “The rescheduling has been a little bit of a nightmare to make sure you can get everyone on deck.”

  The real issue, he says, is that “we’re primarily a brick-and-mortar business. I never like to say it, but we’re part of the world of retail, where you come in and you want to experience the object.” When collectors have come through the door, he says, “everyone is wearing masks, and we have safety protocols, but we’ve actually stood in front of the artworks with clients, and sold them.”

Suzan Frecon’s show of oil paintings, at David Zwirner in New York.

Photographer: Maris Hutchinson

Openings, Zwirner continues, are part of that in-person experience. “It’s a beautiful tradition: You celebrate the artist, you see friends, you go gallery-hopping. It’s so New York, it’s so quintessential, and I want it to come back.”

Boesky, too, says she wants to return to a world of gallery dinners—but old-school dinners, like when I opened in 1996,” she says. “I would just cook them, and then it became this whole other animal: seated dinners that cost $50,000. I don’t enjoy going to a lot of those. It just feels obligatory.”

Goodbye to All That

Dealers uniformly agree that things shouldn’t go back to the way they were. 

“Art was being absorbed by this relentless activity” of the art world circuit, Abreu says. “It was stripped of its power of expression—to reach people and engage people—and the result was that everybody had been forced into the position of shopping and not collecting anymore.”

Gina Beavers's Painting Lee Bontecou's 'Untitled 1967' on my cheek (2020).

Source: Marianne Boesky Gallery

Even Zwirner and Payot, each helming one of the largest galleries in the world, say galleries needed to change.

  “We’ll all run our business differently,” says Zwirner. Everything from the obvious—a plexiglass divider at the reception desk, appointments scheduled in advance, and galleries leaning even more heavily than before on digital “previews” of shows sent out to clients—to how many art fairs Zwirner will attend every year is being reconsidered. “There was almost a hysteria in the art world to be everywhere at all times.” That, he says “needs to be rethought.” 

Payot agrees that travel particularly needs to be scaled back. “This crisis has made us think of everything differently,” he says. “The relationship between digital and physical [sales], how much do we actually need in terms of events and openings, and how much do we actually need to travel?”

  Boesky is reconfiguring about one-half of her gallery as semi-private exhibition spaces. “Does it make sense for me to have a 15,000-square-foot public exhibition space?” she asks rhetorically. “It doesn’t, because we can’t have a gathering of 500 people for an opening.”

The forced reset, Boesky continues, has compelled her to take a step back to reconsider what’s good for her, her artists, and her staff.

“The life we lived prior was not reasonable, it was insane,” she says. “I’m looking forward to a new normal—and not chasing my tail 24/7.”

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September 14, 2020, 5:20 AM EDT

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  This article was originally published here:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/as-nyc-art-galleries-reopen-dealers-rethink-their-businesses