The Art Angle Podcast: What Does an Art Scene Look Like Under the Coronavirus?

Welcome to the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News that
delves into the places where the art world meets the real world,
bringing each week’s biggest story down to earth. Join host Andrew
Goldstein every week for an in-depth look at what matters most in
museums, the art market, and much more with input from our own
writers and editors as well as artists, curators, and other top
experts in the field.

Usually, the first weeks of March are intensely busy ones for
the international art community, as they lead up to the Art Basel
Hong Kong art fair: an unmissable event that galleries, museums,
and even other cultural sectors in the region have used as an
anchor to present their own very best programming to visitors from
around the globe. This year, though, the staggering impact of the novel 2019
coronavirus has forced Art Basel to cancel its Asian fair,
beginning a long cascade of postponed and canceled art events
around the globe.

For the residents of Hong Kong, life has been turbulent for much
of the past year, ever since pro-democracy protests began roiling
the city and its art scene in
late March 2019. Although Hong Kong has been praised by the World
Health Organization for its rapid and effective response to the
virus—it harbors only about 115 cases of COVID-19 at this time,
including just three fatalities—its ace public-health
infrastructure has not exempted the city from an economic crisis
first sparked by the demonstrations, then accelerated by the
measures taken to protect its citizens from infection.

Where does this latest upheaval leave Hong Kong’s artistic
community? Roughly two months after joining the Art Angle to
discuss the effects of the protests, reporter
Vivienne Chow calls in to this week’s episode from her home in Hong
Kong, where she and her fellow residents have been self-isolating
for weeks. She provides a front-line view of both the challenges
and the opportunities presented by the coronavirus, from the eerie
reality of museums, art galleries, and auction houses devoid of people, to the
ingenuity and resilience shown by the many businesses launching virtual exhibition and selling
platforms to compensate for the loss of face-to-face
interactions with collectors, curators, and enthusiasts.

As the rest of the world tries to cope with the ever-changing
conditions of the epidemic, Chow’s account provides perspective,
and even a measure of hope, for how life and culture can weather
the crisis.

Listen above and subscribe to the Art Angle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts. (Or
catch up on past
episodes here on Artnet News.)

Listen to Other Episodes:

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The Art Angle Podcast: What Is Saudi Arabia Trying
to Do With Contemporary Art?

The Art Angle Podcast: How Hollywood Finally Fell
for the Art Market

The Art Angle Podcast: How Jeffrey Epstein Made the
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The Art Angle Podcast: How the Art World Fell Under
the Spell of the Occult

The Art Angle Podcast: Nicolas Party on Why Being
an Art Star Is Like Being in Love

The Art Angle Podcast: What Do the Protests in Hong
Kong Mean for Art?

The Art Angle Podcast: Four Predictions on How the
Art World Will Transform Itself in 2020

The Art Angle Podcast: The Radical, Viral Artworks
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