On March 31, 2020, two weeks after I had to suspend my art gallery tours due to the pandemic, I wrote the following as an email and sent it out to my gallery tours email list:

Dear gallery tour friends, I’m using my huge amount of free time to share with you two things that are important to me. One is my prediction of what the contemporary art world will be like after the pandemic is over. The second is a very personal sharing of my life that’s actually quite positive. I hope you’re faring as well as possible in these scary times. This will likely be the final mass emailing I’ll send out until gallery tours can resume. But I’ll read and reply to any emails you send me in the mean time, even months from now.

Based on my 18 years of leading gallery tours and artist studio tours in the world’s epicenter for contemporary art, and from remembering exactly how the 2008 Great Recession impacted the gallery world, here’s what I think will happen to the art scene after the pandemic ends.

1. Ninety-nine percent of artists and gallery owners will survive the pandemic, as will the rest of the world, and just about everyone in the art world will continue to live in major cities, including and especially New York.

2. No art will be destroyed by the pandemic, unlike during other natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy that flooded dozens of Chelsea galleries and hundreds of Brooklyn artist studios, destroying a considerable amount of art. This time, all art will remain intact.

3. A huge amount of new art will be made during the pandemic, as a large number of visual artists living in cities will have more free time, after (sadly) losing their day jobs. The longer they’re unemployed, the more time they’ll have for making art. Artist studios happen to be the very model for “social distancing,” as almost all visual artists work alone in a mid-size rented room with a door that closes, or from home. So it’s very SAFE for visual artists to create art throughout the pandemic. Visual artists (as well as writers) are among the most “solitary” of all types of artists and will face relatively little disruption in making their art during our time of social distancing, as compared to more “gregarious” artists such as actors, directors, musicians, choreographers, and the like, who need to assemble and collaborate in groups to make their art.

4. I think the large majority of NYC galleries will re-open, even while facing severe financial difficulties. During the 2008 Great Recession, around 7% of NYC galleries went out of business, probably a low number compared with other small business closures that year. While I expect that the “Depression” of 2020 will be worse than the Recession of 2008, galleries all over the city have been selling their art online even as their doors are closed. In fact, only a small percentage of sales are made from gallery “walk-ins” anyway. Galleries have an extensive list of previous art buyers, and a lot of their sales happen online. Of course, most art buyers currently have severely depleted financial portfolios due to the stock market crash, and museums are losing tons of money from shuttering their doors, both of which will make it much harder for galleries to sell art for at least a year or two. Nevertheless……

5. Gallery owners LOVE what they do for a living. As business people, gallery owners have chosen to make money in an arena that is perpetually volatile and risky, because of how very interesting art and artists are. More predictable businesses (like selling shoes or phones or groceries) are of no interest to them, so they’re going to stick with the dealing of art if they possibly can. Dozens of internationally renowned NYC galleries have very deep pockets, and they’re going to be just fine. Many other gallery owners will struggle but use their years of experience and expertise, along with their extensive list of previous art buyers, to make it through the tough times to come, and maybe even flourish again sooner rather than later. Even some of the ones who don’t make it through the end of the year will be back eventually, as selling art is in their blood.

6. Art by women and by young people of color will continue its upward trajectory in galleries. The most important recent change in the international art scene is that art by women has finally been selling well, as is art by young people of color. It’s no longer considered a “bad investment” to buy art by these people, and in fact art buyers now recognize their brilliance and monetary worth. While art sales as a whole will decline steeply for all kinds of artists in the coming months — male, female, White, Black, Latino, Asian, you name it — the trend of exhibiting more female artists and more young artists of color will continue, especially now that around half the city’s gallery owners are women.

7. We may eventually see an INCREASE of galleries in certain neighborhoods, due to lower rents. The 2008 Recession happened just as the Lower East Side was on its way to becoming the 2nd largest and most important gallery area in the world (next to Chelsea). While the Recession did result in around a 6-month pause in gallery construction there, by 2010 the Lower East Side roared back to become the 150-gallery behemoth that it is today. One thing that helped was that the financial crisis lowered real estate prices substantially, giving more gallery start-ups the chance to establish themselves. I predict that as commercial rents inevitably fall during the upcoming “Depression,” eager new gallery owners are bound to take advantage of this opportunity, particularly in an area like Tribeca, which just before the pandemic was the city’s major buzz for its rapid increase of galleries, and consists of fabulous century-old architecture, whose rents are now going to be lower.

Anyway, those are my predictions.

Now, to get personal. Two things:

One thing I will NEVER take for granted again, as long as I live, is the joy of gathering in groups, as we did and will continue to do again on gallery tours, and for so many other occasions. I could have chosen a solitary profession, such as art scholar or art critic, but instead I relish and thrive in my very social occupation of leading tours. I love speaking about art to a live group of people, and watching and hearing everyone react to the art, especially when it’s provocative or gorgeous or in other ways exciting.

And now for my recent coming out. I bring this up not only as part of my personal journey of self-acceptance and liberation, but also to benefit other people who may be feeling something similar, and haven’t been able to put a name to it. Here it is: I’m gender-free, meaning I don’t identify as a man or a woman. It’s not that I’ve “become” gender-free, it’s that I’ve been that way from birth and only recently began to realize it and personally identify with what it means.

Growing up, I had zero interest in what boys around me liked to do: contact sports, war games, toy trucks, fishing, fighting, and all that, which unfortunately made me a social outcast. Neither was I interested in girl-specific activities like dolls, dress-up, and cheerleading, and I never once felt myself to be girl. Instead, I liked activities enjoyed equally by both genders, such as reading, playing board games, and strolling in nature. As an adult, I gravitated naturally toward gender neutral occupations, first my teaching career and now gallery tours.

I don’t act the way men do, and I don’t vote the way most of them do. I’m turned off by “man food” like steak and pork chops, so 40 years ago I became a vegetarian. I’m a strident feminist, so my values, political and otherwise, are much closer to the values of women than men. Yet, I don’t feel like a woman either, I just don’t. Neither am I transgender, as these people have a very strong attachment to gender.

Don’t worry, nothing about me will change — not my name or manner or clothing or anything else, other than my now being able to give you a strikingly fresh perspective whenever gender issues come up in the art I take you to see.

I know I look like a guy, which I can’t help, due to my genes. But my genes also made me gender-free on the inside, which is WAY more important than the superficial stuff on the outside.

Most other gender-free people call themselves “non-binary,” a term I find a bit cold and abstract, so I prefer the term “gender-free” to describe my identity, evoking a joyous freedom and liberation from gender. Suddenly my life makes sense. I only wish I had figured this out long ago.

You can continue referring to me as “he,” for now, until I find a better word, because the pronoun “they” that many non-binary people use feels too impersonal to apply to me. And I still identify as gay, with just a minor adjustment: I’m a gay person, not a gay man.

If this topic ever comes up with your friends or family or anyone else, please tell them you know a gender-free person, and say anything you want about me. Spread the word so that others may benefit from their own self-realizations.

I can’t wait to see you again as part of a lovely large gathering, inside a gallery. Until then, my best wishes to you and your loved ones.

Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D.
Founder and Director
New York Gallery Tours
www.nygallerytours.com