Antonio Addamiano (Dep Art Gallery): "this is why galleries in Italy, on the web, struggle the most"

How is the recovery of the art gallery sector going? Has digital been a successful challenge or is there still something to fix? How are galleries preparing for the reopening of events and fairs? What are the differences between Italy and abroad? We wanted to investigate with a prominent personality of the environment, Antonio Addamiano, founder and director of Dep Art Gallery (Milan) and board member of the National Association of Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries (ANGAMC) for Lombardy. The interview is edited by Federico Giannini.

Antonio Addamiano

FG. How is the reopening going for the Lombard tunnels?

AA. There has been a livelier than usual first week of September, thanks also to the logistical and publicity effort of Milan Art Week: usually our activity starts from mid-September onward, but this year, given the very particular months we have had, we have moved a bit earlier to organize exhibitions and events. It’s a different year than usual, but the interest from the public and collectors has been there (and that’s also thanks to the Internet), and now we are starting to see people in the galleries again. Obviously, medical-health requirements must be met to ward off any risk of contagion, and as a result the openings have been by appointment, with mandatory reservations, spread over the entire day. But this is not a problem. In addition, I must also emphasize that ANGAMC gave important help to the sector, especially by investing in communication and publicity. We wanted to give a strong reaction to communicate that the group is united and wants to be at the center of the art system.

As for sales, how are they progressing? Is there a recovery, are there positive signs?

As for Dep Art, we had a very good July and also a good August: we were open on a rotating basis and, except for one week, we never closed. We are certainly not at the levels of the past few years, partly because people have other priorities, starting with organizing for the future: we sell an accessory good, not a basic necessity, and so we are not being rewarded right away; our sector will be among the last economic areas to recover. But I must say that we worked well this summer, especially with foreigners.

Clearly the prolonged closure of the emergency months has led many galleries to flock to the web, to digital: but can this digital help galleries, sales, the relationship with collectors?

For our gallery, digital is crucial, so much so that for several years Dep Art has been investing about half of its budget in web and platforms. To do good digital you have to start with good content: so the first investment is on the space/gallery, professional photographs of individual works, installation views, videos, and then on where to show the content. With the lockdown, online platforms have become (in addition, of course, to implementing one’s own website, which we take for granted) a requirement for everyone. We were already very much “web,” we were just a little behind on YouTube and Linkedin, so we closed the loop and boosted those two social as well. On others, such as Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook we were well present with very good numbers, including followers. But in my opinion at the base there was, by some, a real run-up, which involved both the modernization of their site and the creation of content. But content is based on long planning: and this is something that we have been doing well since 2006, consequently we had a large amount of material available. That was everybody’s need, though, because the Web was the only interface with the public, so it was all about that.

Speaking of digital platforms, some fairs are also beginning to offer themselves digitally. The latest case is miart, which organized the 2020 edition exclusively in digital format. How did it go?

In the end well, because we appreciate the effort that Fiera di Milano made in partnership with ArtShell, which miart chose as its platform. Obviously if they had chosen Artsy I think the results would have been different, because Artsy has been doing digital fairs for years and has millions of clients in the database. However, they wanted to bet on ArtShell, which is a great program but in turn also very complex (you can upload a lot of data, files, information), and this put mine and other galleries a little bit in trouble, because we had to work very hard to be able to be present in the best way on the platform. The results, however, were good in the end, partly because, as with so many things that are offered for free, the effort and the publicity are praised, and even though the requests that came in from collectors were not many, let’s say it’s still better than nothing. I know that someone even sold (it happened more easily for the under 5,000 or 10,000 range, while the larger ranges opened negotiations instead). On the positive side, it was not so much about the sales as it was about the fact that digital miart somewhat broke the stalemate and reactivated the interest of collectors through this site, which was well done, but a bit of a debut for such an important fair. I think I can say that it was a winning bet, thanks also to public institutions such as the City of Milan and the participating gallerists, who put their best efforts and sent newsletters to their customers to spread the word about the new concept as much as possible.

Installations by Dep Art Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Turi Simeti. Works 1960-2020, Sept. 8 to Dec. 22, 2020

Installations of Dep Art Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Turi Simeti. Works 1960-2020, from September 8 to December 22, 2020

Dep Art Gallery installations on the occasion of the exhibition Turi Simeti. Works 1960-2020, from September 8 to December 22, 2020

Did the fair give you support?

Yes, as early as August they were active with several webinars. Even they knew that the platform was not easy. Then many galleries, such as mine and others, were all committed to creating a newsletter and publicizing it, as if there really was a physical miart, communicating to the public the presence of exhibitions and only shows. So on the communication level we pretended that there was the physical fair. Then we know very well that the web, especially in Italy, is not that far ahead, but we also had to start, and it seemed like a right way to do it.

Why is Italy not so far ahead on digital? What limitations does it have compared to other countries?

Italy somewhat lacks the simplicity of putting itself forward in a professional, more immediate way. In other words: it means we have to put the selling price, including vat, on the platforms. Abroad, online fairs have been more successful because almost all gallery owners have communicated the prices of works. The few that (I’m thinking of the digital edition of Art Basel) did not put visible prices were mostly Italian gallerists. And at miart the same: we for example did the experiment of doing half-and-half. There is always a belief that you should not communicate a price to the public in a transparent way, which on the contrary has always been the winning weapon of auction houses. I give an example: a client of mine told me about the pleasantness of visiting the virtual booths of Pace Gallery, David Zwirner and Thaddaeus Ropac, and discovering, for example, the quotation of a Kiefer at 1.4 million or a Kusama at 2 million. And he was astonished. But for me it is completely normal: for those who can buy the work it is a matter of transparency, and for those who cannot afford it it is still a way to know its value. Here: in Italy we lack this vision. Above all, it is lacking in the high-end gallery owners, those who sell artists like Fontana, Modigliani and others. There is no custom of writing down the price, even in physical fairs, when often abroad (I think of Tefaf, for example) exhibitors show the price of objects. In Italy there is always an attempt to initiate a private negotiation to have an extra chat with the customer, because if one writes “500 thousand” then maybe he fears that then the customer will not approach, and if instead he comes even just to ask for the price one gets a contact to work on. It is a different and legitimate logic, but on the Internet it is sometimes a loser, because customers who spend more care little about price differences: usually high-end customers are only interested in the work and its price. And that’s it: they don’t feel like contacting the gallerist and waiting for a response, they just want to see if the price is correct and possibly know negotiation margins and other details. So that kind of customer is definitely lost on the web, and this thing in Italy is not understood.

Also fairs maybe should insist more on this point.

There is not, in Italy, a desire to influence the logic of galleries. Instead, this is something that is done a lot abroad, while in Italy no one suggests galleries to display the price at the fair: everyone wants to open a negotiation and chat. You want to keep busy, it’s also a matter of managing your time. But I for one have attended a fair in Holland several times that obliges gallerists to display the price. And you talk to two people a day: but those two people are interested, because they have seen the price and they know what you are talking about. When you don’t display the price, you talk to a hundred people, five of whom become contacts, and one is very interested: so I bring home a lot of names, but I also make a lot of effort. They are just two very different ways of working. I don’t think I can say which is the winning strategy, but I see that the big foreign galleries are going in the opposite direction from the Italian ones. Perhaps Italy will have to consider forcing exhibitors to display the price: the dealer otherwise always tends to play the reserved treatment card. We Italians so much like to create a very intimate relationship and make the customer feel at home. So there you need words, not a written number.

The staff of Dep Art Gallery

And speaking of intimate relationships, there is now the issue of having to go back from digital to physical, because the next event will be Artissima, the first major fair to reopen live after confinement. What are your feelings about it?

Good, because the restart “in person” happens with one of the best Italian organizations: I must say that Artissima, in terms of logistics, promotion (and I would say ... everything), is excellent. What’s more, it also has very large spaces, so with the reduction of galleries, which will be 120 [versus 206 in 2019, ed.], it will allow 7 thousand people to enter. Of course it’s not the 15 thousand of the past, but 7 thousand people registered, selected and pre-accredited is still a very good number: think that in Paris the 2020 edition of Art Paris just ended, and there it was 3 thousand people. You will, of course, lose almost all the international audience, but then again, all the fairs that live on international clientele have been canceled. In France, for example, they canceled FIAC, which is more related to European and American audiences, and instead held, as mentioned, Art Paris, which caters mainly to the French. Artissima is in the middle, because it takes the best of Italy and a good portion of foreigners, and maybe it can make it: Turin is very close to France, so there will probably be a good French audience. Artissima then has always had a very proactive attitude. They were also the first Italian fair to do an online fair (Fondamenta), free for all the previous year’s exhibitors, which was a huge gesture: miart, on the other hand, only offered free to those who will also exhibit next year. So Artissima’s was a much appreciated gesture, one that went out to gallerists, especially those with little web presence, and one that makes it clear that Artissima’s is an organization that helps galleries. And galleries should be helped, because without galleries the system dies. So Artissima following this logic, offered the platform for free to all the exhibitors from the year before just to support the system, and this is a very important thing. So I’m happy that the first ones to reopen in Italy are them: they have always proved themselves up to the organization and the challenges.

And speaking of challenges: the main one now is to recover after a difficult year. What are your predictions?

2021 will not be an easy year, although it must be said that every gallery has a different situation, with diversified items (some have space rental costs and others have their own space, the number of employees, exclusive artists, the number of public events to support and Italian and foreign fairs). Turnover has dropped, but on the positive side, at least expenses have also dropped: for example, for Dep Art the biggest item is participation in Italian and foreign fairs. The moment the fairs are not happening, the galleries have significant savings. Here: in my opinion, the main challenge will be to see if, when you go back to live work, you can recover these costs. And in this sense the first challenge will be precisely Turin. At the moment, however, it is important for each gallery to do an internal analysis to try to rationalize costs better. Before, there was too much running around and little time to reflect on one’s business and strengths and weaknesses. In the last few months we have had time to do this kind of analysis, and for the future it will be crucial.

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