Another gallery closing

Moving faster and faster.

"The Fine Arts section of the Times has been shrinking for years. It's half the size it was even 10 years ago."

"'Weekend Arts: Fine Arts/Leisure' Today it came to 10 pages. Weekend Arts: Movies/Performances is 24."

In 2009? I was introduced to a small but respected younger dealer. I said I didn't follow recent contemporary art much. He said "I don't blame you".

There's been a slow regrouping of post-war art in the US, going against the standard American bias, early on with Manzoni, putting him on par with Rauschenberg and Johns, more recently with the Zero Group.  In 2012 MoMA mounted an exhibition of works from the Japanese post war avant-garde,  Tokyo 1955–1970. Culture follows the economy

Until the last few years Arte Povera, was the only non-US post-war accepted in the US as equal or nearly equal in stature to the American equivalents, the Minimalists and Post-Minimalists. But even then the Pistoletto exhibition in NY in 1988 became a scandal in Europe for being in a secondary institution, sloppily organized and in spaces without climate control. There was shock at how many of the pieces came back damaged. At this point the market is so starved for new work that can be seen and made to be seen as interesting that larger contemporary galleries have become  "rediscovery" of minor or forgotten artists and packaging them.

http://www.levygorvy.com/exhibition/willem-de-kooning-zao-wou-ki

The larger contemporary galleries more and more have been going into the archives.