Of the year in which our lives and projects were abruptly halted, we can rescue the following:

1. Deaccessioning: Museums are reluctant to part with their works, which is why the word "sale" is not used, but rather deaccessioning, which means that a work goes to auction or is acquired by a private collector. It is not something common, but the pandemic forced them to face financial losses because of the closures and lockdowns. Thus, for example, the Baltimore Museum of Art decided to sell three works, including The Last Supper, by Andy Warhol, and hopes to raise about $ 65 million to pay off its debts. The same happened with the Brooklyn Museum, which released 12 works, including a piece by Lucas Cranach "The Old", expecting to raise about 40 million dollars. 

2. Those in charge of the Louvre Museum sharpened their brains and decided on an “auction of experiences”: offering unforgettable moments in this Art Mecca in Paris. For example, visiting La Gioconda without being disturbed by countless tourists, or spending the night in the museum or buying a watch and having a work of the collection printed on the dial. The highest base corresponded to witnessing the moment in which La Gioconda is taken off the hook and transferred to the museum's restoration workshops, to be studied by experts who analyze its state of conservation (which usually happens once a year).

3. FOLA, in Buenos Aires, offered to print a billboard of the donor who, for a few pesos, sent his own photo and this was installed in the exhibition room, since it was not allowed to attend the institution in person. The giant photo was then delivered to its owner along with a photo-book of their choice.

4. Other innovations were made by the artists themselves, opening their houses-workshops to sell, because of the closure of the galleries. Valeria Villar organized group shows on the sidewalk. Marcos López energized his creations through the sale of intervened objects for daily use, such as a series of very original jars-penguins. Another space used was a supermarket, since essential businesses remained open. There, Pedro Roth, very cleverly, organized the exhibition Essential Art.

Online Resources:

Large platforms and social networks became the main means of transmission of knowledge and the market as well. The aesthetics of Zoom, which we all accept and have learned to use, will never surpass the face-to-face experience that remains non-transferable. However, this hybridization between tradition (visiting a museum) and the virtual, which at some point was going to take place, was accelerated and is also celebrated today. The museums designed excellent tours for Instagram and YouTube, as well as teaching courses and interviewing curators and artists via Zoom. MALBA from Buenos Aires offered countless moments of meeting with those who wanted to learn or connect and even before opening to the general public it presented Proxémica (a record of actions that could be seen online): two performers dance around a tape that marks the new signaling of the museum, adhering to the obligatory resources of the new normal established by the health authorities.

The Art Fairs, mostly suspended, were forced to appear on virtual platforms and, although they had good sales, they did not reach previous markups. This was not the case with the most important auction houses in the world. For example, Christie’s innovated with ONE, a streaming sale in four cities (Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York) and reached spectacular figures, with values ​​close to 4.4 billion dollars.

Artists influenced by the situation:

Not even Jeff Koons's Puppy, guardian of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, was left out of the new normal. Let's remember that the sculpture is covered with plants that are renewed from time to time: today Puppy wears a mask. Japanese artist Tanaka Tatsuya created miniature scenes with everyday objects in his Miniature Calendar series, incorporating masks. Liu Xiaodong was unable to return to China during the forced quarantine in New York, the works produced at that time represent the reality that surrounded him.

"Art is therapeutic, it transforms anguish into something vital," said Marta Minujin, when she participated in her piece Pandemia (a very particular see-saw located at the entrance of the MALBA in Buenos Aires), another of the creations that emerged in the isolation. And, as always, Banksy's interventions in his own bathroom or in a London subway, disguised as a fumigator.

Puppy, by Jeff Koons

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao 

Tanaka Tatsuya, from the series Miniature Calendar

Revalue the collection: 

The emergence of this unexpected and complicated problem for exhibitions coming from other countries (since transfers were prohibited), forced museums to review those works from their permanent collections not on display. Those very rich collections, often ignored, came to light with innovative curatorships. The revision of what is kept out of the reach of the visitors will see the light, in a renewed version, thanks to this mutation or change of canon, causing a turn of the page in the history of art, which is the history of its own transformations.