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Dallas Art Fair debuts new online platform for buying art from Texas galleries

Dubbed Culture Place, it launches after the art fair was postponed due to COVID-19.

Updated at 6:15 p.m.: Comments from Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum, have been added to this story.

The Dallas Art Fair announced in March that, for the first time ever, its annual event, which lures people from all over the world, would not be happening. Instead, it was postponed all the way to October.

The highly popular fair, which during its 12 years had emerged as the centerpiece of Dallas Arts Month, was struck from the April calendar, making it one of the area’s first cancellations triggered by COVID-19. At the moment, it’s uncertain whether the fair can even take place in October.

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In the meantime, those who run the fair have looked for alternatives, and they believe they have one, which they consider better than sitting back and hoping the headlines magically change.

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On Thursday, the fair announced a new venture called Culture Place, Inc., which its executives describe as “a digital marketplace for contemporary art collectors to discover, connect [with] and buy from galleries across the region.”

It is not a venue for casual art-lovers, who, say, buy their art from Art.com or Z Gallerie. This is a site for serious collectors — and as a city, Dallas has no shortage of such people — who want to pursue their passion, even in the midst of COVID-19.

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And yet, John Sughrue, who co-founded the Dallas Art Fair in 2009, sees its online component as having the power to reach an even broader audience.

He sees the goal of the fair, whether it’s online or in person, to serve established collectors and “nurture and develop aspiring collectors.” The success of the fair, he says, is derived from “how the city has taken to collecting the contemporary arts. I see it as part of the zeitgeist of the city. One of the things that defines this city is our passion for the contemporary arts.”

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The success of the fair, he says, is “about the contemporary arts being embraced by the entirety of the community as something that matters. So, yes, it is a serious collecting site, but it’s one for both the established collector as well as the aspiring collector.”

The beauty of visual art is that it translates well to the digital world. Take, for instance, The Mona Lisa. It would be nice to see it in person, at the Louvre in Paris, but if you can’t, a high-resolution image and the reams of detail you can have delivered online make it the next best thing to being there.

Heck, you don’t even have to wear a mask when you’re looking at the screen.

The Dallas Art Fair took place in virtual form in April — a first — which proved to be a big success, as in $3 million in sales over 10 days. In fact, it was such a success, says fair director Kelly Cornell, that it seemed like a natural extension to take it a step further.

That step became Culture Place, which lives online at cultureplace.com.

Agustín Arteaga, Eugene McDermott director of the Dallas Museum of Art, and Dallas Art Fair...
Agustín Arteaga, Eugene McDermott director of the Dallas Museum of Art, and Dallas Art Fair director Kelly Cornell listen to speakers during the announcement of the fourth annual Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program, on April 11, 2019 at the Fashion Industry Gallery in downtown Dallas. (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

“We knew we had an engaged audience, but it really opened up our eyes to how engaged they were and how much potential there was in shifting to a digital art world that we had always shied away from. But now,” Cornell says, “it’s the only option.”

She admits that physical fairs, which mandate physical interaction, are at the moment next to impossible. Not to mention dangerous.

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“We wanted to create Culture Place to extend the opportunity,” she says, of creating an online substitute for foot traffic in a gallery, which at the moment isn’t happening.

Eric M. Lee, director of the renowned Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, says he had heard recently that “there have been a lot of high-end sales taking place online.” Even so, Lee says, “There’s nothing like that firsthand encounter with a work of art. That one-on-one encounter with a work of art. It’s like meeting people on Zoom. It’s a very different experience when you meet them in person.

“There’s this famous essay written in the 1930s by Walter Benjamin called ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.' And he predicted that, with the proliferation of photographs and reproductions, the aura that an original work of art has would be lost. But the irony is, it seems like, as more and more reproductions and images of works of art appeared, the aura of that original work of art became even more powerful. So, the exact opposite seems to have happened. And yet, there’s nothing that can replace that one-on-one encounter with the original work of art.”

Nineteen galleries have agreed to be a part of Culture Place, to offer catalogs and promote their artists through the online venue. Those signing on so far include the Erin Cluley Gallery, Cris Worley Fine Arts, Liliana Bloch Gallery, Galleri Urbane — all based in Dallas — and an Austin-area gallery called Dirty Dark Place.

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Erin Cluley says she was drawn to Culture Place because of the alternative it offers at a time when business is difficult, and in-person business is next to impossible.

“I like that it’s under the umbrella of the Dallas Art Fair,” she says. “I like that it’s a more curated group of regional galleries. As the pandemic has been upon us, people have been more focused on the local and regional.”

Cluley, the woman behind the gallery that bears her name, says the online programming offered by the fair has been “wildly popular.” The Erin Cluley Gallery is, for instance, offering a conversation with artist Riley Holloway a week from Friday via Culture Place. “Those are things we just weren’t doing as much of before.”

She says she also likes the seize-the-moment opportunity offered by Culture Place, especially since in-person viewings have essentially gone dark. “Right now,” she says, “we have people looking at online content. We have focused attention from the audience.”

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James Drake, 'American Dreams,' 2017. It's one of the works of art being offered through a...
James Drake, 'American Dreams,' 2017. It's one of the works of art being offered through a new online platform called Culture Place.(Courtesy of the artist and Moody Gallery, Houston)

As the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and so it is with an arts world scrambling to find digital alternatives in order to survive. The performing arts are adapting, too. Online theater, or theater that takes place drive-in-movie style, are two examples being tried on an experimental basis.

The silver lining that many in the arts are hoping will present itself in a post-COVID world is not unlike what professional sports discovered in the 1950s. Much to its surprise, the National Football League stumbled into a revelation that soon became a turning point: The 1958 championship game in which the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants in “sudden-death overtime” not only lured millions of new viewers, it demonstrated that pro football might actually be a better experience on television than it is in person.

On July 3, Disney+ launched its exclusive offering of the Broadway sensation Hamilton. Citing analytics data, Variety reported that the Disney+ app was downloaded 752,451 times globally and 458,796 times in the United States from Friday, July 3, through Sunday, July 6. Around the same time, The New York Times asked:

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Why can’t we stream every Broadway show?

And now, the art world is exploring its own options, by flexing its muscles in the digital-video marketplace, which is what its Dallas-based creators say Culture Place is all about.

“Nobody disputes that art fairs account for about 40 percent in sales, and galleries another 40 percent in sales,” says Sughrue. But at the moment, “That’s gone — nonexistent.”

There’s always been the “want to see it” element, and, he admits, “that will remain a preference for most. But the truth is, it’s more and more difficult. As Kelly says, the only game in town is digital.”

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What has surprised the art world, Sughrue says, is “the response of the collector community to digital. They’re paying attention. They’re buying art.” And they’re doing it online, without leaving their homes.

Cruz Ortiz, The Arrest of Patsy Tijerina, 2020. It's one of the artworks being made...
Cruz Ortiz, The Arrest of Patsy Tijerina, 2020. It's one of the artworks being made available via a new online service called Culture Place. (Anthony Rathbun / Nancy Littlejohn Fine Art)

The international rise of art fairs has, in recent years, created an ecosystem that brought together artists, gallerists and collectors — what Sughrue calls a community, whose connection has morphed into digital.

The times we live in “have led us down this path of opportunity, which otherwise, we would never have pursued,” Sughrue says. “Make no mistake about it: This isn’t a path to untold prosperity. This is the path to survival. An art industry has gone online and is finding a way to function. Digital is here to stay.”

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Cornell sees travel as being difficult “for a very long time,” underscoring the importance of digital alternatives even more. They’re also appealing, she says, for eliminating the “heavy physical expense” of transporting art and artists around the world.

It is, Sughrue says, “a brave new world” in the industry.

“We believe the gun has been fired to start the race, and at the moment, people are looking around for the starting line, not the finish line.”

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