How art galleries will navigate our new normal

Chantelle Rountree on the left and Gallery Manager Amy Homewood on the right

Chantelle Rountree, associate director at Petworth’s reopened Rountree Tryon Galleries, is predicting a slow return to normal as the art world picks up again on the face-to-face interaction on which it thrives.

“Lockdown started badly for us. We had invested a large sum of money in a stand at one of the most important art fairs in our annual calendar, the BADA (British Art Dealers Association) Art Fair in Duke of York Square, Chelsea, which was running this year under a new name The Open Art Fair, March 18-24.”

Much of the advertising and set-up costs had already been paid, and the new fair management team felt it was too late to cancel. However very little art was sold and it closed after just two days.

“The fair provided a virtual tour that we sent out to clients but this in no way made up for not being there and everyone’s focus was elsewhere, quite rightly.

“It was a huge financial blow to many art dealers, some of whom rely solely on fairs to sell their art. The fair has traditionally been a great success for us and in normal times we would hope to turnover ten to 15 per cent of our annual turnover and start the spring art season with a bang. Instead it was a very bad start for us and the rest of the trade.

“With the Prime Minister announcing lockdown on March 23, we all felt extremely worried about how our businesses would cope. Confidence was low and with the major London auction houses Christies and Sothebys closing earlier than many other businesses, the art market did not look like it was going to fare well.

“However, the government realised the risk to small businesses and Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s announcement regarding the furlough scheme, business interruption loans and local council grants was extremely welcome news. We received our grant quickly from Chichester DC, furloughed our staff and shut the doors.

“Our director Jamie Rountree remained to try to keep things ticking along and a new opportunity came to club together with a few other dealers to sell some stock online, via The Saleroom.com. Traditionally this platform has only been used for auction houses, but they opened it up to dealers and in our first online timed auction we sold eight items of stock totalling £41,000 – a percentage of which went to NHS charities to help in the fight against CV19.