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Frieze New York to launch free online viewing rooms
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Visitors observe art by Takashi Murakami at the New York Frieze Art Fair in New York on May 3, 2018. (Shutterstock/lev radin)
Frieze New York is the latest art fair to be cancelled in the reaction of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The fair was set to take place from May 7 to 10 at Randall's Island Park in New York, with some 200 participating galleries and a special focus on artists of Latin American descent and the Chicago artist community.
Meanwhile, Frieze Sculpture, which was to open at Rockefeller Center on April 22, will be postponed to a yet-unknown date in the summer.
Frieze New York will offer full refunds for booth fees to all the exhibitors who were set to participate in this year's fair, with ARTNews reporting that the payments are to be issued on May 20 and June 20.
Organizers will also refund other advance payments exhibitors may have made ahead of the fair, including deposits and construction fees.
Additionally, Frieze New York will offer participating galleries the opportunity to display works in new online viewing rooms without any charge.
Details about the virtual platform are still scarce at the time of writing, although the project had been in development before the cancelation of the New York fair.
Read also: Online viewing rooms of Art Basel Hong Kong launched
This announcement echoes the decision of Art Basel to launch online viewing rooms in lieu of its physical fair in Hong Kong, which was cancelled in early February.
More than 230 exhibitors participated in the digital initiative, offering for sale more than 2,000 works with prices ranging between $750 and $3.0 million.
Fred Scholle, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Galerie du Monde, said in a statement that the virtual platform has been "very helpful in bringing the works that we were to show at Art Basel Hong Kong to the attention of a worldwide audience."
Art Basel has recently announced that the inaugural edition of its online viewing rooms attracted some 250,000 visitors and generated approximately $270 million.
In a similar line, David Zwirner has invited 12 smaller New York-based galleries to join its existing online viewing room as part of the "Platform: New York" initiative.
Participating galleries will present two works by a single artist that they represent, with all sales inquiries passing directly to them.
David Zwirner is not charging anything for the online space, which will go live on Friday, April 3, or taking a commission.
